The case of a mysterious 2012 bitcoin heist is closed. The Division of Justice on Friday seized $3.36 billion in cryptocurrency from a Georgia man who pleaded responsible to wire fraud, the company mentioned Monday. He faces as much as 20 years in jail.
Authorities say that James Zhong, 32, stole roughly 50,000 bitcoin from the Silk Highway market in September 2012. Zhong was accused of establishing quite a few accounts on Silk Highway, depositing small quantities of bitcoin, then executing a number of withdrawals in the identical second. This tricked the system into giving him considerably extra bitcoin than he deposited. He then transferred the bitcoin to a wide range of accounts in an try to hide his identification and the supply of the cryptocurrency, based on the US Lawyer’s Workplace for the Southern District of New York.
IRS brokers issued a search warrant for his home in November 2021 and located the vast majority of the stolen bitcoin hidden in units in an underground ground protected, the Justice Division mentioned. There have been additionally massive quantities of bitcoin discovered on a single-board laptop, which was found stashed underneath blankets in a popcorn tin saved in a rest room closet, it famous in a launch.
Zhong started to cooperate with authorities this previous March, when he voluntarily surrendered over a thousand further bitcoin. He’s scheduled to be sentenced on Feb. 22.
Silk Highway was a black market that functioned on the darkish internet from 2011 to 2013. Its founder, Ross Ulbricht, was convicted in 2015 of seven expenses associated to the exercise of Silk Highway. These included conspiracy to visitors narcotics, cash laundering and conspiracy to commit laptop hacking. He was sentenced to life in jail.
