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Federal officials say the stolen Bitcoin was found when they served the search warrant at\u00a0Zhong’s Georgia home, solving a decade-long mystery.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The\u00a0digital tokens were\u00a0hidden in a ‘single board computer’ that was stashed inside a popcorn tin and stored in a bathroom close of Zhong’s home.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Authorities also seized $662,000 in cash, physical Bitcoin coins, an 80 percent interest in a Memphis-based real estate investment company with substantial holdings, along with\u00a011 1-ounce bars of silver and gold.<\/p>\n

‘James Zhong committed wire fraud over a decade ago when he stole approximately 50,000 Bitcoin from Silk Road,’ U.S. attorney Damian Williams said in a statement this week.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘For almost 10 years, the whereabouts of this massive chunk of missing Bitcoin had ballooned into an over $3.3 billion mystery. Thanks to state-of-the-art cryptocurrency tracing and good old-fashioned police work, law enforcement located and recovered this impressive cache of crime proceeds.’<\/p>\n

Prosecutors said Zhong executed a scheme to defraud ‘Silk Road’ dark web marketplace.\u00a0They said he made nine accounts September 2012 and\u00a0would then flood the site with withdrawal requests,\u00a0which tricked the site into giving him multiples of what he had deposited.<\/p>\n

After doing this 140 times, he had withdrawn all of the site’s cryptocurrency holdings.\u00a0He then transferred the Bitcoin into separate accounts to keep it from being detected.<\/p>\n

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Authorities seized $662,000 in cash, physical Bitcoin, 80 percent interest in a Memphis-based real estate investment company with substantial holdings, and silver and gold-colored bars<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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Bitcoin, the largest cryptocurrency by market capitalization, EVden EvE NakliYAt<\/a> hit a two-year low of $15,632. Ether, the next largest cryptocurrency, extended losses Wednesday to hit its lowest since July<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Silk Road is an online black market used to distribute illegal drugs and goods to buyers, according to the U.S. Attorney.\u00a0<\/p>\n

‘Mr. Zhong executed a sophisticated scheme designed to steal bitcoin from the notorious Silk Road Marketplace,’\u00a0Special Agent in Charge Tyler Hatcher said.<\/p>\n

‘Once he was successful in his heist, he attempted to hide his spoils through a series of complex transactions which he hoped would be enhanced as he hid behind the mystery of the darknet.’<\/p>\n

Beginning in March 2022, Zhong began voluntarily surrendering to the government additional Bitcoin that he had access to and had not dissipated. In total, he voluntarily surrendered 1,004 additional Bitcoin.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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  A man faces up to 20 years in prison after more than $3 billion in stolen was found\u00a0stashed in a popcorn tin at his home in what authorities call the\u00a0second largest seizure of cryptocurrency. James Zhong, 32, pleaded guilty on Friday to stealing the Bitcoin a decade ago from the illegal Silk Road marketplace, which […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19397,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":true,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5077],"tags":[5078],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76110"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/19397"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=76110"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76110\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":76111,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76110\/revisions\/76111"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76110"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76110"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.announcement.news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76110"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}