From 2012 to 2013 James Zhong had scammed the “black market” of the dark web, a portal called “Silk Road”
Had stolen 3.36 billion euros in Bitcoinhitting the record for the largest cryptocurrency confiscation ever. The US Department of Justice seized 50,676 Bitcoins a James Zhonga 32-year-old hacker accused of stealing them in 2012 from Silk Road, the notorious “black market of the web”. He now faces twenty years in prison.
Hidden in the popcorn latin
The digital currency, the report reads, was stored in a “single board computer”, a type of microcomputer Raspberry Pi inserted «in a popcorn tin hidden under the sheets in the bathroom closet ”at Zhong’s home in Gainesville, Georgia. Along with it were also $ 661,900 in cash, 25 Casascius coins (physical Bitcoins), one gold coin, three gold bars and eight silver bars.
The police actually recovered the can a year ago (November 9, 2021) but the details have only now been released. The hacker, who looks like Bitcoin investor and experthe faces 20 years in prison, but has admitted his guilt and is ready to cooperate. The judge’s sentence will however only be issued next February 22nd.
Theft on the “dark web”
To implement his plan, Zhong exploited a flaw of Silk Roadthe Dark Web portal, closed todaywhich made it possible to buy, sell and trade contraband products, from weapons to drugs. In 2012 the man had managed to manipulate the site’s payment system so as to steal Bitcoin from numerous users, including the portal’s founder himself, Ross Ulbricht (now in life imprisonment), without anyone noticing. A practice that went on until the sudden closure of the portal.
Unprecedented seizures
At the time, the value of the confiscated sum was a record but today those Bitcoins are worth a third. Due to the vertical collapse of the cryptocurrency, the figure stolen from Zhong it fell from 3.36 billion euros to less than one billion. The largest cryptocurrency confiscation ever dates back to last February when the US police seized 4.5 billion dollars that had been stolen by the hackers from the cryptocurrency exchange site Bitfinex.
