© Reuters
Investing.com – The U.S. Department of Justice announced on Monday that it seized approximately $3.36 billion in stolen bitcoin during a raid on the residence of James Zhong. He pleaded guilty to one count of wire fraud, which carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison.
U.S. authorities seized approximately 50,676 bitcoins, valued at more than $3.36 billion at the time, from Mr. Zhong’s home during a search of his Georgia home on November 9, 2021, a said the DOJ. This is the DOJ’s second-largest financial seizure to date, following the seizure of $3.6 billion in allegedly stolen cryptocurrency linked to the 2016 hack of the Bitfinex cryptocurrency exchange, which the DOJ announced in February.
Zhong stole bitcoins from Silk Road, which the FBI shut down in 2013, according to authorities. He took advantage of vulnerabilities in the marketplace to execute the hack. The platform’s founder, Ross William Ulbricht, is serving a life sentence today, given his role in the trafficking of illicit products.
“For nearly a decade, the whereabouts of this massive amount of missing bitcoin has turned into a $3.3 billion+ mystery,” U.S. Attorney Damian Williams said in a press release.
Through blockchain analysis, law enforcement was able to recover over 50,000 bitcoins. But this kind of hacking didn’t end with the demise of Silk Road. Cryptocurrency platforms continue to be vulnerable to criminals. In October 2022, Binance suffered a $570 million hack. In March 2022, another hacker grabbed over $600 million from Ronin Network.
According to a report by Chainalysis, $1.9 billion worth of cryptocurrency was stolen in service hacks through July 2022, compared to just under $1.2 billion over the same period in 2021.