The US Department of Justice (DoJ) has secured a guilty plea from James Zhong who in 2012 helped the notorious Silk Road dark web marketplace to exchange $3bn worth of Bitcoin (BTC).
At the time, Zhong unlawfully obtained 50,000 BTC from the marketplace while he traded in drugs and various illicit items.
The Silk Road marketplace was shut down back in 2013, but the people involved with it have been hunted to this day by the DoJ and other law enforcement agencies.
The marketplace founder, Ross Ulbricht, received a life sentence back in 2015, and the marketplace itself operated exclusively with BTC as its sole payment system.
Commenting on this case, US attorney for the Southern District of New YJames ork Damian Williams said that for more than a decade the missing $3.3bn BTC was a mystery.
However, thanks to advanced tracking software and police work, the cache of BTC has been recovered. Zhong had in fact defrauded the Silk Road marketplace himself, having used multiple accounts to syphon off funds and then obfuscate the source of the funds.
However, upon executing a search warrant, police authorities were able to locate the missing BTC on a simple computer hidden in a floorboard.
Zhong pled guilty to all charges, and his defense attorney argued that when Zhong had participated in the scheme he had been only 22 years of age, and that he had returned the missing BTC in full, therefore deserving a clean start.
Zhong has pled guilty to wire fraud and has forfeited all of the funds that authorities had been looking for the past decade. The real value of the BTC owned by Zhong following the market crash is closer to $1bn. Zhong will be sentenced in February.
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