The U.S. Department of Justice says it has recovered $3.36 billion U.S. in stolen Bitcoin (BTC).
U.S. authorities say they seized 50,676 Bitcoin during a raid on the residence of James Zhong in Gainesville, Georgia.
It is the Justice Department’s second-largest cryptocurrency seizure ever after it recovered $3.6 billion U.S. from a 2016 hack of the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex.
Zhong has been arrested and pleaded guilty last Friday (November 4) to one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
According to authorities, Zhong stole the Bitcoin from the illegal Silk Road marketplace, a dark web forum on which drugs and other illicit products were bought and sold using cryptocurrency.
Silk Road was launched in 2011 but the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) shut it down in 2013. Its founder, Ross William Ulbricht, is serving a life sentence in prison.
“For almost ten years, the whereabouts of this massive chunk of missing Bitcoin had ballooned into an over $3.3 billion mystery,” the U.S. Attorney’s Office said in a news release announcing the recovery.
According to U.S. prosecutors, Zhong took advantage of the Silk Road marketplace’s vulnerabilities to steal the Bitcoin, which he has held for several years.
Zhong’s social media profiles include pictures of him on yachts, in front of private planes, and at NFL football games.
According to Chainalysis, $1.9 billion U.S. worth of cryptocurrency was stolen in hacks through July of this year, compared with $1.2 billion at the same point in 2021.
