US Announces $3.36 Bn Crypto Seizure In Connection With Silk Road Dark Web Fraud
The US Department of Justice on Monday said that it has seized bitcoin worth USD 3.36 billion from a person who pled guilty to committing wire fraud in September 2012 when he unlawfully obtained over 50,000 Bitcoin from the Silk Road dark web internet marketplace.
This seizure was originally made in 2021 and was recorded as the largest cryptocurrency seizure in the history of the US Department of Justice and today remains the Department’s second largest financial seizure ever.
The US Government is seeking to forfeit, collectively: approximately 51,680.32473733 Bitcoin; and the guilty person’s 80 per cent interest in RE&D Investments, LLC, a Memphis-based company with substantial real estate holdings; USD 661,900 in cash seized from ZHONG’s home; and various metals also seized from ZHONG’s home.
The guilty person, James Zhong, committed wire fraud over a decade ago when he stole approximately 50,000 Bitcoin from Silk Road. “For almost ten years, the whereabouts of this massive chunk of missing Bitcoin had ballooned into an over USD 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,” said US Attorney Damian Williams.
Zhong apparently executed a sophisticated scheme designed to steal bitcoin from Silk Road Marketplace. 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.’
Silk Road was an online “darknet” black market. In operation from approximately 2011 until 2013, Silk Road was used by numerous drug dealers and other unlawful vendors to distribute massive quantities of illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services to many buyers and to launder all funds passing through it.
In 2015, Silk Road’s founder Ross Ulbricht was convicted by a unanimous jury and sentenced to life in prison.
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