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The United States Department of Justice announced it has seized a record $3.36 billion of bitcoin and secured a conviction against the person who stole it ten years ago.
Federal prosecutors said that James Zhong pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud for stealing the bitcoin from Silk Road, an illegal online marketplace for drugs and weapons on the dark web. Silk Road was seized in 2013 by the federal government, and Ross Ulbricht was arrested for running it. Ulbricht was convicted on seven charges and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
While Silk Road was operational, Zhong managed to steal approximately 50,000 bitcoin from the site by tricking its payment system into depositing the cryptocurrency into his account.
Investigators found the stolen funds on a computer that was hidden inside of a popcorn tin in a bathroom closet at Zhong's home.
"For almost ten 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. This case shows that we won't stop following the money, no matter how expertly hidden, even to a circuit board in the bottom of a popcorn tin," U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a statement.