Feds Recover $3.4 Billion In Missing Bitcoin

Last November, the U.S. Department of Justice made out with the haul of a lifetime.

The Feds announced on Monday they had recovered and seized 50,676 bitcoin from the darknet marketplace Silk Road in an unannounced November raid, which at the time was worth a massive $3.36 billion.

The seizure ends a decade-long mystery over the fate of the stolen Silk Road bitcoin. For those who weren’t busy scrolling the darkweb back in 2012, Silk Road was a marketplace where everything known to man was bought and sold using bitcoin.

Silk Road is now best known for breaking many laws and its founder Ross Ulbricht being sent to prison, but it is also known for having 50,000 bitcoin stolen out from under it.

Now, those bitcoins have been found in the Georgia home of James Zhong, who is now on the hook for wire fraud and 20 years in prison.

The scheme behind the theft turned out to be quite complicated. Basically, Zhong created nine phony Silk Road accounts, funded them with some bitcoin, and then quickly triggered over 140 transactions in a row. This made Silk Road’s withdrawal-processing system bug out and deposit 50,000 bitcoin into Zhong’s accounts.

Overall, a very good job by the Feds to track down this money. Hopefully they sold before bitcoin crashed.