Hacker who stole 50 thousand bitcoins 10 years ago gets a year in prison

James Zhong, a Georgia resident who implemented a sophisticated scheme to steal cryptocurrency from the Silk Road darknet marketplace in September 2012, was sentenced to one year and one day in prison.

Zhong created nine accounts on Silk Road and initiated more than 140 transactions to deceive the withdrawal processing system. In this way, he withdrew more than 50,000 coins to his accounts and then transferred the cryptocurrency to a huge number of additional addresses that also belonged to the hacker. Zhong registered all of his accounts, providing only the necessary minimum information. He did not purchase any goods or services on the marketplace.

The intricate scheme allowed him to prevent timely detection, hide his identity, and conceal the source of the bitcoins. Almost five years later, as a result of the BTC hard fork and its split into two cryptocurrencies (BTC and BCH), Zhong received another 3,500 bitcoins, making him the owner of a total of 5,3500 tokens.

Eventually, U.S. law enforcement agencies were able to uncover the fraudster’s scheme. on November 9, 2021, the cryptocurrency he stole was confiscated, and in March 2022, Zhong voluntarily began to hand over the coins he managed to keep to the government. In total, he handed over another 1000 BTC to the authorities. Most of his property was also confiscated.