Justice Department seizes billions in crypto from Silk Road scammer

The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York and the Internal Revenue Service's Criminal Investigation department said Monday that James Zhong pled guilty on Friday to stealing more than 50,000 bitcoin (BTC-USD) from the Silk Road dark web internet marketplace.On Nov. 9, 2021, Zhong's home had been searched by law enforcement, which seized ~50,676 BTC, then valued at $3.36B, representing the second-largest crypto seizure in the U.S. Department of Justice's history." For almost ten years, the whereabouts of this massive chunk of missing bitcoin (BTC-USD) had ballooned into an over $3.3B mystery," said U.S. Attorney Damian Williams. Silk Road was a "darknet" black market in operation between 2011 and 2013 that was used by drug dealers and others to distribute illicit goods and services and to launder funds, the DOJ said. In 2015, the site's founder Ross Ulbricht was convicted and sentenced to life in prison after an investigation by the office of the U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York.By the end of 2017, Zhong had obtained ~53,500 bitcoin (BTC-USD) of total crime proceeds through a complex series of transactions on Silk Road through numerous accounts in which he withdrew more bitcoin than he deposited, the DOJ said. In the 2021 search of Zhong's premises, IRS-CI agents recovered ~50,491 bitcoin. They were located in an underground floor safe and on a single-board computer that was hidden under blanket...