Police physique cam footage exhibits the Silk Street hacker opening up a laptop computer with 1000’s of Bitcoin (BTC) on it in entrance of federal investigators, not realizing he was incriminating himself.
James Zhong was charged by the US authorities final 12 months for stealing greater than 50,000 BTC from the illicit on-line market Silk Street in 2012.
In 2019, After his home was damaged into, Zhong known as the police to tell them, regardless of having mountains of incriminating proof mendacity round in his residence. Zhong revealed over the telephone that he was an investor in Bitcoin, placing himself on the radar of investigators.
On the similar time, the IRS Prison Investigation unit was painstakingly attempting to resolve the Silk Street hack of 2013, analyzing particulars of its on-chain paper path.
In the end, an investigator from the blockchain analytics agency Chainalysis, who was employed by the federal government, seen that an tackle related to the Silk Street hacker by accident carried out a KYC (know-your-customer) routine with a crypto alternate, revealing Zhong’s identify and residential tackle months after his 911 name.
With assist from Shaun MaGruder, CEO of a cyber intelligence firm BlockTrace, the IRS created a plan to enter Zhong’s residence and discuss to him below the auspices of investigating the break-and-enter that he had reported earlier.
As soon as inside, Zhong made the grave mistake of telling investigators he was a “Bitcoin OG” and that he had 1,500 BTC sitting on one laptop computer alone, which he then proceeded to indicate investigators on digital camera.
Says MaGruder of BlockTrace,
“Lo and behold, he had $60 or $70 million value of Bitcoins proper there subsequent to us…”
It was additionally revealed that Zhong was one of many earliest contributors to the event of Bitcoin, and routinely posted recommendation and strategies on on-line boards for enhance the Bitcoin protocol.
Investigators returned the next day, nonetheless below the pretext that they had been serving to him, however as a substitute executed a search warrant.
Utilizing a canine educated to search out pc {hardware}, the brokers discovered the wallets with the addresses to the 50,000 BTC, as soon as value over $3 billion, sitting in a protected buried in concrete beneath Zhong’s basement flooring.
Zhong was sentenced to at least one 12 months and sooner or later in jail for his position within the Silk Street hacking incident.
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