United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, announced that James Zhong was sentenced to one year and one day in prison for fraud committed in September 2012. Zhong had illegally obtained about 50,000 Bitcoins from the Silk Road dark web internet market.
The US Government Sells Some Of The Bitcoins It Seized From The Silkroad Hacker
As part of the investigation into Zhong, the US government has made a final seizure order for 51,680,32473733 Bitcoins, worth over $3.4 billion at the time of its seizure and today over $1.57 billion.
Silk Road was an online "darknet" black market used to distribute illegal drugs and launder money.
In his crime, Zhong implemented a scheme to defraud Silk Road by creating several Silk Road accounts, and then quickly defrauded Silk Road's withdrawal-processing system, triggering more than 140 transactions, from the Bitcoin-based payment system to Zhong's accounts of approximately 50,000 Bitcoins. got it sent.
Zhong used a decentralized Bitcoin mixer, an overseas cryptocurrency exchange, and an impressive array of tech gadgets to thwart his tracking efforts.
In August 2017, Zhong received an equivalent amount of Bitcoin Cash (BCH) crime revenue just because he had 50,000 Bitcoins obtained illegally from Silk Road alone, bringing the total crime income to about 53,500 Bitcoins.
Beginning in or around March 2022, Zhong began voluntarily handing over to the US government any additional Bitcoin he had access to and had not yet disposed of.
*Not investment advice.