Meet James Zhong, a 22 year old who single handedly stole more than $3.4 ***BILLION*** Bitcoin from The Silk Road in 2012! This is eCrimeBytes.com S 2 Ep 1-1: The Silk Road Dark Web Thief James Zhong – Act 1: Make Fat Stacks!
Sources:
- https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/us-attorney-announces-historic-336-billion-cryptocurrency-seizure-and-conviction
- https://www.justice.gov/usao-sdny/pr/silk-road-dark-web-fraud-defendant-sentenced-following-seizure-and-forfeiture-over-34
- https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/65692972/united-states-v-zhong/
- https://www.binance.com/en/feed/post/432912 (Photo)
- https://www.elitetrader.com/et/threads/the-u-s-cracked-a-3-4-billion-crypto-heistand-bitcoins-anonymity.373692/ (Photo)
- https://coinchapter.com/the-heist-of-the-decade-james-zhongs-silk-road-scam/ (Photo)
- https://cointelegraph.com/magazine/3-4-billion-bitcoin-popcorn-tin-silk-road-hacker/ (Photo)
- https://coinsalad.com/silk-road-bitcoin-billionaire-james-zhong-lost-it-all-new-details-reveal-more-about-him-and-what-happened/ (Photo)
- https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11985885/Bitcoin-scammer-admits-using-money-stolen-gains-impress-women-hes-sentenced-year.html (Photo)
Chapters:
0:00 Intro
8:40 Silk Road Background
9:43 Meet James Zhong
11:25 The Scheme
17:39 The Investigation Begins
20:17 The Search Warrant
25:21 Second Largest Seizure EVER
Transcript:
00:00:10:00 – 00:00:28:27
Keith
Hey, welcome back to eCrimeBytes. We are now in season two. So season one was kind of like our first year of college. We learned a whole bunch about how to edit, talk, record, audio, video, all sorts of stuff. So in season two,
00:00:28:27 – 00:00:33:00
Keith
now that we’ve got that under control, we’re going to just be concentrating on the content here.
00:00:33:00 – 00:00:58:12
Keith
And this is one of my more favorite cases that I’ve researched, and I’m calling it the Silk Road Dark Web, Thief James Zhong And one of the reasons why I picked it as our first case for season two was I made an E crime bites nibble on it a couple months ago, and when I posted it at the time, I thought to myself, I was like, Hey, I never heard of this.
00:00:58:12 – 00:01:13:28
Keith
I’m so surprised this case didn’t get more airtime in the news. So I made a nibble on it and I posted it out there and I had audience people say, I can’t believe I never heard of this. And I said, This is a great case to make into a full episode. So here we are.
00:01:14:00 – 00:01:47:19
Seth
Well, and it’s a great case for a lot of reasons, but one of the things I’ve learned is one of my very good friends at work has a Ph.D. and she did a dissertation on cybercrime adults and learned that people who are exceptionally good cyber criminals tend to be exceptionally deep on the autism spectrum. So that resonates. That being said, her theory is everybody’s on the autism spectrum, and history will tell you that some of our most important and famous game changers in history are also probably on the autism spectrum.
00:01:47:19 – 00:01:59:25
Seth
So I say that not with any trends of negativity. In fact, that’s usually positivity. But anyway, that’s one of the things that I picked up on this case immediately and that’ll kind of make more sense as we get deeper into the episode.
00:01:59:27 – 00:02:21:16
Keith
Yep. And I want to just do one very quick update before we jump right into the case. And let’s see, I could probably even put this on the screen for our video viewers just want to thank our latest review on Apple Podcasts. Go figure, Skate said entertaining. Great show. I don’t know who go figure. Skate is. It’s not me.
00:02:21:16 – 00:02:45:08
Keith
It’s not one of my friends that I know of. I just want to say, first of all, say thank you and you have great taste. I can tell already. And we appreciate you listening to our podcast. So we hope that Season two will keep you just as interested this year. All right. So with that, let’s get back. Actually, let me show you a picture of the individual we will be talking about.
00:02:45:10 – 00:02:49:27
Seth
And kudos. So kudos for the great picture that is a fantastic picture.
00:02:49:29 – 00:03:04:25
Keith
Yeah. It took me a while to find one. And when I found one, him holding a beer bottle like this up, I was like, This is awesome. And then I did some more research, found out he liked cocaine and he liked Cheetos popcorn. And I was like, This is going to make a great title slide. And here you go.
00:03:04:28 – 00:03:31:07
Keith
So you’re going to find all these symbols in this title slide actually relate to this case in some way, shape or form. And this is James Ong. He is the individual that’s the criminal in this case. But I can almost guarantee by the end of this case, you’ll probably be kind of cheering for him, especially if you find out how easy the hack was that he used to get all this money.
00:03:31:10 – 00:03:53:23
Keith
Okay. So with that said, to jump right into our case details like we usually do, and I’m going to start with the technology now, we’re going to be talking about the Silk Road, dark Web Forum. And we got a little more language upfront. If you haven’t heard of the Silk Road, don’t worry about it right now while we’re just giving you the bullets.
00:03:53:23 – 00:04:11:11
Keith
Just think this is a place where people can go buy things like drugs on the Internet and it’s on the dark web and it’s a little bit different to get to than your normal website. But we’ll talk a little more about the silk Road in a few moments here once we get through our our case details.
00:04:11:13 – 00:04:13:28
Seth
Yeah. No, I’m sorry that you have.
00:04:14:00 – 00:04:38:23
Keith
Oh, one thing I want to point out, and I’m not going to spoiler alert you here, I’m going to make you wait. This bug is probably one of the most simple, absurdly simple bugs that I have ever seen. And you’re going to see that Jameson exploited it and walked away with 3.4 billion and I say billion with a big B, It’s just amazing.
00:04:38:23 – 00:04:43:03
Keith
So stick around and listen to what this bug was, because literally anybody could have done this. Anybody?
00:04:43:09 – 00:05:01:03
Seth
Yeah. I mean, I feel like you kind of, you know, don’t bury the lead, but you kind of gave away the plot there to John’s because it does tie to the crime. Right. So the crime here is very simple. It’s a single crime essentially of wire fraud. I would also argue it’s theft, but I think wire fraud is kind of baked into that.
00:05:01:05 – 00:05:14:11
Seth
But the reason why what was such a simple crime but, you know, either did or should have made so much noise was the sheer amount of money involved, at least theoretical money. You are talking about crypto.
00:05:14:13 – 00:05:31:24
Keith
Yeah. And the criminal this case, like I said, his name is James Zhong. He at the time of the crime, he was 22 and we’ll set that up here in a second. So I’m just telling you that because he was a young individual when this crime happened, I know we’ve been talking about people in their forties and so forth.
00:05:31:24 – 00:05:45:14
Keith
So we’re back to the the young group. Yeah, the young group exploiting computers. And that’s, that’s actually, in my experience, much more typical that you see younger offenders in cases like this.
00:05:45:16 – 00:06:06:02
Seth
Right. And the victim here or the victims rather, would be basically the entire community of this Silk Road dark Web market. Now, keep in mind, that’s probably a place where illicit or illegal activity is mostly conducted. So, you know, you may want to factor that in from a sympathy perspective.
00:06:06:05 – 00:06:25:05
Keith
So why do we pick this case? I’ll say it again, Most people did not hear about this case. When I ran into it. I was very surprised I hadn’t heard about it. And when I did research into it, I was even more surprised I hadn’t heard about it. So it’s a really, really interesting case. So that’s that was number one reason why I picked it.
00:06:25:07 – 00:06:44:09
Keith
And the second was when I read the research and I was kind of like, Go James Zhong. It was a different feel to the case than the other cases that we had in our Season one, where it was kind of like, you know, Doctor Shitbag doing terrible things. You kind of almost cheer for James here, and it just had a different feel to it.
00:06:44:09 – 00:07:02:09
Keith
So that was the other reason why I picked it. Now, I do want to tell you we’re going to try something a little different in season two. So in season one, what I heard back from friends, family and audience is the long episodes are kind of hard to sit down and listen to all at once. Me personally, that’s how I listen to podcasts.
00:07:02:09 – 00:07:25:03
Keith
So that’s how we started out. But we’re listening to our audience. So I started thinking about this and I said, How could we still be? We need to go deeper into cases because it’s hard to even talk about a case without talking about the details. So there’s going to be time involved, and the best I could come up with is let’s split episodes in nice dividing lines.
00:07:25:03 – 00:07:46:13
Keith
And in this case right now I’m calling them Acts, Act acts because I’m not really sure what to call them. I don’t want to call them parts because we did that last season. And what we’re doing in these acts is we’re kind of setting up different scenarios. So the first act here is going to be basically James Zhong getting his feet wet and doing the crime.
00:07:46:15 – 00:08:03:25
Keith
And then our second act is going to be when the law catches up with him. And then the third act is going to be once he gets into the court system. And we’re going to try to split these across sort of like mini episodes so that way you can listen to one of these and have it be succinct.
00:08:03:27 – 00:08:26:12
Keith
And then when you’re ready, you can then pick up the next mini episode and continue on with the case and hope you like it. If this doesn’t work or if you do like it, please just give us some feedback and we’ll try to work with it accordingly. And with that, I’m going to give the floor to you now, Seth, because our Act one is obtain fat stacks which I know is a favorite term of yours now.
00:08:26:15 – 00:08:38:23
Seth
Yeah. So the inside joke is at a previous episode I said to Jones, What is a fat stack, which was very illuminating for my lack of street smarts. So yes, Act one obtain fat stacks.
00:08:38:23 – 00:08:44:00
Seth
So Silk Road was an online darknet black market, right?
00:08:44:00 – 00:09:09:15
Seth
So an operation from around 2011 to 2013, Silk Road was used by numerous drug dealers and other unlawful vendors to distribute massive quantities of illegal drugs and other illicit goods and services to various buyers, and really also to launder all things that are passing through it. So there’s really a very, very comprehensive laundering marketplace for bad guys and bad things.
00:09:09:17 – 00:09:30:21
Seth
So in 2015, following a frankly groundbreaking prosecution by his office, the Silk Road founder and a guy named Guy’s name is Ross Ulbricht was convicted by a unanimous jury and sentenced to life in prison. So it’s got to be a dark background.
00:09:30:23 – 00:09:54:14
Keith
And remember that name because Ross’s name is going to come up later on in terms of James Zhong So we’re giving you this background to kind of tie the pieces together later on in the story. Right. So if we switch gears and we say, who is James Zhong? Well, let’s meet him. Back in 2012 when this happened, what Seth was just setting up with you with the background of Silk Road.
00:09:54:16 – 00:10:11:17
Keith
He was 22. He got his Bachelor of Science in Computer Science in University of Georgia. He was arrested for cocaine in 2017. So already, you know, this dude loves to party.
00:10:11:19 – 00:10:34:12
Seth
Yeah. I also want to note that in 2012. Yeah, let’s pause. I mean, this is one of our favorite pictures ever that Jones is now sharing fantastic picture. So I do think it’s interesting, though, that in 2012, you know, which is a solid 11 years ago now, I think Bitcoin was way more obscure and way less understood by, you know, the market, what it could be.
00:10:34:12 – 00:10:50:27
Seth
I’m still not entirely sure of how it’s really supposed to be used, frankly. And I work in this industry. So in 2012, I think there was just way less knowledge and understanding of the dark web and certainly of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency. But. Jones keep me honest on that assumption.
00:10:51:00 – 00:11:13:20
Keith
Yeah, I mean, it’s not it’s not as big as it was now. That was, I would say, more in the early adopter phase, the 2012 we’re going to talk about I don’t want to do a spoiler here, but James was involved in Bitcoin prior to this in 2009 and that was even earlier adopter. So he made some money in Bitcoin in 2009.
00:11:13:20 – 00:11:51:21
Keith
So you can imagine 2012, some people knew about it, but it’s not like it is today in 2023. I mean, everybody knows what crypto is. It was kind of new ish back then. Yeah. So in September of 2012, Zhong executed a scheme to rip off the Silk Road of money. So how did he do this? Well, the government says that he did this in over 140 transactions in rapid succession in order to basically trick the Silk Road system into withdrawing more money than he put in.
00:11:51:23 – 00:12:11:22
Keith
And I’m not going to tell you the bug yet. I’m just telling you what the bug will let him do. Okay. So you’re still going to have to hold on to figure out what the bug is. It’s so absurdly simple, but what he was able to do is put in x amount of bitcoins. Let’s just say it’s five just to be easy here, five bitcoins.
00:12:11:24 – 00:12:29:13
Keith
And when he put in a five bitcoin, he was then able to then go out and say, I want five bitcoin back. So then you can imagine he got all his money back and then he goes, I want five bitcoin back. And so girl gave him another five bitcoin. He goes, I want another five bitcoin back and it gives him another five bitcoin and he never deposited it.
00:12:29:13 – 00:12:46:29
Keith
So as you see, the trick was, is he deposited some money but the system would let him take out the money thinking, you know, he’s giving you the money back that you put in there. But it didn’t stop when he kept asking for his money back. It kept giving him his money back over… the system…
00:12:46:29 – 00:12:51:11
Seth
… wasn’t marking a debit and a credit process in a 1 to 1 basis.
00:12:51:13 – 00:13:10:08
Keith
And that’s how he made his money. And you’re going to say what bug allowed him to do this and you’re going to have to stick around because it’s absurdly, absurdly simple. So what he did is he did 140 transactions like this, and he did this back in 2012, which Bitcoin back then was not worth what it is worth today.
00:13:10:10 – 00:13:38:26
Keith
And you’re going to see because you got Bitcoin back then and hung on to it, he made some some serious, serious dough. Okay, so a couple more details. Zhong When he would do this, what do we call it, this hack, I guess when he would do this process of pulling out more money than he was owed, he usually would fund accounts between 200 to 2000 Bitcoin.
00:13:38:28 – 00:14:00:12
Keith
And when I got into the research of this case, immediately, I was like, How does a kid at 22 have 200 to 2000 Bitcoin in order to put into the Silk Road to start this hack? That part I couldn’t get over that part that, that really bothered me. I did some research into it, just in case you’re wondering the same thing.
00:14:00:12 – 00:14:17:08
Keith
I did some research into it, and the reason why he was able to do that is because he was an early adopter of Bitcoin. He was doing the mining back when mining didn’t really cost you much money and he would mine and get bitcoin, lots of it. And because he had lots of it, he then used it in this hack against Silk Road.
00:14:17:08 – 00:14:34:17
Keith
So when I kept seeing all this stuff about a kid being 22 and the dollar figures being thrown around that he’s going to be able to pay in bond later and so forth. And this is the reasons because he is already wealthy before this hack. He already has some serious dough before this hack.
00:14:34:17 – 00:14:36:19
Keith
All right. And a couple more details.
00:14:36:19 – 00:14:44:28
Keith
All the people could tell from the outside at this point before they did any analysis on the system to figure out exactly what he did, was that
00:14:44:28 – 00:14:46:00
Keith
he would,
00:14:46:00 – 00:15:11:16
Keith
you know, do this hack that would give him more money than he was owed. But then he would then transfer out of Silk Road and basically into the things like Bitcoin mixers and so forth that we talked about in season one to attempt to anonymize yourself when you have cryptocurrency and you’re going to see it doesn’t work totally for him because obviously he was caught because we’re talking about him now on eCrimeBytes.
00:15:11:16 – 00:15:17:11
Keith
Okay, so that’s some background, right?
00:15:17:11 – 00:15:37:16
Keith
You know about the Silk Road and you know a little bit about James Zhong. This is 2012. Let’s fast forward five years and we’re doing this to give you a little more background to figure out why this case is so important. So we’re talking about 2017, right, for anybody that holds Bitcoin at this point, anybody…
00:15:37:19 – 00:15:59:07
Keith
James Zhong, you, me if anybody had Bitcoin there was a split in Bitcoin where basically if you held Bitcoin you would then have that bitcoin, but then you’d have another set of Bitcoin cash. If you’re familiar with stock and you’ve ever heard of a stock splitting and you have two shares of the same stock, kind of the same thing.
00:15:59:07 – 00:16:14:15
Keith
So he now in 2017, once he got all that money from the Silk Road, now basically owns more by doing nothing because the Bitcoin split in 2017 giving him even more money.
00:16:14:15 – 00:16:17:12
Seth
So now it’s fast forward four years.
00:16:17:12 – 00:16:50:14
Seth
Okay. So let’s flash forward to much more modern times. This is November of 2021. How did the law catch up with James Zhong? So while it’s not clear from available court documents, we believe it was probably through blockchain analysis. So we’ve been reading the pleadings here, and the court documents state that Jimmy or James sent a small percentage of the original Bitcoin through a Bitcoin mixer, and he made those 750 Bitcoin, which again back then was worth a lot less than it is today.
00:16:50:16 – 00:17:15:24
Seth
Harder to trace. So Jimmy converted that bitcoin cash he receives in 2017 back into Bitcoin, so he reinvested it generated in that conversion which made it harder to trace back to Silk Road. But it’s also true that Bitcoin is inherently semi anonymous, but that semi anonymity, that’s something that’s a feature, right, of built in functionality of Bitcoin, not something that he created.
00:17:15:27 – 00:17:38:23
Seth
And the overwhelming majority of the Bitcoin simply sat on the bitcoin blockchain such that anybody could have traced it back to Silk Road with any of the many publicly available web based blockchain analysis tools. So they probably found him through seized Silk Road data. So there was an investigation here, we’re calling it. They’re calling it a pre search.
00:17:38:25 – 00:18:07:13
Seth
So in 2019, the government and specifically the IRS and their criminal investigation Unit, or I.R.S-CI., began investigating the whereabouts of about 53,000 directly forfeitable Bitcoin that was involved in or traceable to to this guy Ulbricht’s crimes. Right. Remember, Ulbricht was the founder of Silk Road who was put in jail for life. Specifically. The government began investigating a September 2012 scheme.
00:18:07:20 – 00:18:25:14
Seth
If you remember that timeframe. To defraud Silk Road of at least approximately 50,000 Bitcoin from Silk Road’s Bitcoin based payment system and subsequent efforts to launder this Silk Road Bitcoin. So it’s directly associating Ulbricht with Zhong.
00:18:25:14 – 00:18:43:19
Seth
So let’s talk about the seized Silk Road data. The court documents tell us that in reviewing images of the Silk Road servers, forensic images, the IRS Criminal Investigation Group analyzed computer databases which contains detailed Silk Road transactional records.
00:18:43:22 – 00:19:07:07
Seth
And those servers included the following information: an account ledger accounting ledger of all user activity deposits and withdrawals, blockchain information about deposits and withdrawals, including which Silk Road addresses belong to which users. That’s obviously key. Bitcoin Address information, Bitcoin transaction information, vendor buyer disputes and resolutions. All the things you would expect to get
00:19:07:07 – 00:19:13:20
Seth
Right? Error logs, gift codes, internal transfers, private messages between Silk Road users, shipping info.
00:19:13:20 – 00:19:34:04
Seth
User account info including user account creation information, feedback, Transaction History, including purchases, favorites, vendor items for sale and word filters. The Silk Road Server’s transactional database included detailed information also regarding
00:19:34:04 – 00:19:47:23
Seth
one of Zhong’s accounts that were actually traced to him. So like anything else, I guess what makes Bitcoin such a I guess safe transactional record also ultimately led directly to Zhong has the details all there.
00:19:47:25 – 00:20:00:02
Seth
So it was probably his first fund transfer where he initially learned of this bug, where he could take out more than he put in, its Silk Road payment systems. And other accounts were also much more anonymous though.
00:20:00:04 – 00:20:16:24
Keith
Yeah, all the other accounts that he made, he abused fictitious names and so forth. But his first account when he actually found the bug was his account that he was using to buy cocaine or whatever it was he was buying on the Silk Road at the time. So at this point,
00:20:16:24 – 00:20:26:15
Keith
November 9th of 2021, there was a search warrant executed as as Gainesville, Gainesville, Georgia, home.
00:20:26:18 – 00:20:56:07
Keith
Okay. And this is the point where the authorities started putting a person to this account that was stealing Bitcoin from the Silk Road. And you probably wonder, why do they even care? Why? Why do authorities even care to go get this Bitcoin from one criminal that stole it from another criminal? Well, it’s because the United States was owed all the money that it seized from the Silk Road.
00:20:56:09 – 00:21:16:27
Keith
And since Zhong stole it from the Silk Road, it’s kind of like he took it from the government. And the government wants to go get the rest of the money that they’re owed because they pulled it from Ulbricht, if that makes sense. Right. So there’s a search warrant at Zhong’s home and this this is the cra… This is just I find it humorous and crazy.
00:21:17:00 – 00:21:45:07
Keith
So when they get there, they seized approximately 53,500 Bitcoin, which in 2021 is in a tremendous amount of money. It’s not like it was in 2012 because things have split the price of Bitcoin per Bitcoin has gone up and so forth. But if you stop there, you say, okay, 53,000 Bitcoin, that’s a lot. Well, they also found something like
00:21:45:07 – 00:21:49:18
Keith
$661,000 just in cash.
00:21:49:21 – 00:22:11:08
Keith
He had some other physical bitcoins that I’m not I wasn’t fully aware of. But there’s actual like metal coins that you can get that he also had in a floor safe so this motherfucker had a floor safe with a bunch of stuff in it. And I’m going to show you pictures to all this in a second. So be excited about this because I went out and found them.
00:22:11:10 – 00:22:31:08
Keith
They had metal bars in there that were worth like think like gold and silver, that type of metal bars in there that are worth money. He had, you know, one gold colored coin, some silver gold colored coins and so forth. Let me show you a picture of all this stuff. There’s just too much for me to go through.
00:22:31:11 – 00:22:55:04
Keith
I’m going to pull it up here. So for our video viewers, this is the investigative trail that I thought was most interesting. They went to Zhong’s house and they did their usual search and they went to a closet and they found a Cheetos popcorn tin and being the government they’re going to search absolutely everything they can find in his house.
00:22:55:04 – 00:23:04:25
Keith
So they open up this tin right? And what’s inside the tin? It’s a like a beach blanket wrapped around something. And when they unwrap
00:23:04:25 – 00:23:20:06
Keith
that beach blanket, there was a computer inside. So this computer actually had all those Bitcoin on it. And Seth and I have talked about this in season one and we’ll talk about it again, that cryptocurrency is it’s a virtual coin.
00:23:20:06 – 00:23:39:09
Keith
It’s not something that you well, I lie because I guess he has physical coins in is his floor safe but traditional cryptocurrency is just something it’s a number on a computer. And the reason why he has this computer that I’m showing you on your screen is that’s where he took all those Bitcoin and he saved it onto this computer.
00:23:39:09 – 00:24:02:29
Keith
So this is basically like holding all the 53,500 Bitcoin that they seized in their hand. It’s on a computer. Let me show you some more. This is James Zhong’s floor safe. And you can see even without even squinting that he’s got a bunch of fat stacks in there, but he’s also got more stuff. He’s got all these gold coins.
00:24:03:01 – 00:24:25:08
Keith
So what I was stumbling through earlier, trying to tell you about all the coins, bars and things like that. This is a picture. This is actually what came out of his safe. So those actual physical gold coins, those are worth money too. And they found those. And I was just like, man, this guy was pretty much set. Here’s another picture, here’s some more.
00:24:25:10 – 00:24:59:18
Keith
The metal bars are kind of on the upper right of that picture. And then there’s the just cellophane wrapped cash. If you’re listening to audio, just imagine tons and tons of stacks of fat, stacks of cash being pulled. Yeah, just all. And they basically just like you’ve ever seen. And again, I’m saying this for the audio people. If you’ve ever seen those arrest photos that police do where they’re kind of standing in front of the loot that they caught, it’s kind of like that they spread all this stuff out that they found in a safe across a table and took a picture of it.
00:24:59:18 – 00:25:01:26
Keith
And it looks pretty darn immense.
00:25:01:26 – 00:25:11:25
Seth
All right. So now we’re at the early November 2021 timeframe. There’s a search warrant issued for his songs. Gainesville, Georgia home.
00:25:11:28 – 00:25:13:01
Keith
Same search warrant.
00:25:13:04 – 00:25:33:21
Seth
Yeah. Incidentally, I didn’t know there was a Gainesville, Georgia, know there is a Gainesville, Florida, because my wife is from there. But apparently there are several Gainesvilles down south. So law enforcement seized around 50,000 and a half Bitcoin and they give you a very specific number here because I guess that level of granularity matters given the value of Bitcoin.
00:25:33:24 – 00:25:59:25
Seth
But then it was all valued even in 2021 at over 3.36 billion with a B dollars. And I want to make this very clear, this seizure was then the largest cryptocurrency seizure in the history of the US Department of Justice, but not just don’t let that shock you because crypto is fairly recent, right? It was the second largest financial seizure by the DOJ ever.
00:25:59:28 – 00:26:28:16
Seth
So that is really just kind of giving you an idea that this single soul kid from Georgia was directly related to one of the largest financial crimes by volume in the history of the United States. The government is seeking to forfeit collectively around 51,680 Bitcoin, Zhong’s 80% interest in this company called RE&D Investments LLC, which is a Memphis based company with apparently substantial real estate held.
00:26:28:16 – 00:26:31:24
Seth
You can buy a lot of real estate Jones with over $3 billion, did you know that?
00:26:31:28 – 00:26:33:06
Keith
Yeah.
00:26:33:08 – 00:26:50:14
Seth
And 661,000 in cash seized from Zhong’s home and various metals. I guess those are some of the you know the shrink wrapped valuable gold or whatever it was in his home.
00:26:50:17 – 00:27:13:17
Keith
All right. So if we flash forward to March 2022, I thought this was pretty interesting. And I made a slide in my notes just for this. You imagine now, Seth just said the government came in and basically says, We get all your shit to Zhong because he made a lot of money off of there. So we’re talking $3.4 billion worth of money.
00:27:13:19 – 00:27:46:01
Keith
Zhong didn’t stop there in March 2022. He’s like, Hey, I got some other Bitcoin that I made too. I’m just going to voluntarily surrender another thousand Bitcoin to you too, for the crimes that I did. And you’re probably wondering where did he get that bitcoin and why is he surrendering it? Well, my friend, I’m going to have to tell you that you’re going to have to come back for eCrimeBytes act number two, the arrest, because we will find out why he is in possession of more Bitcoin than what he just stole.
00:27:46:04 – 00:27:58:28
Keith
So I hope you enjoyed this real quick act number one of eCrimeBytes and we’re going to pick up a day or two after this. So be looking back at our playlist and we’re going to continue on with the arrest.
#ecrimebytes #cybersecurity #electronic #computer #truecrime #podcast #security #hacker #humor #funny #comedy #zhong #silkroad #bitcoin #theft #bug #darkweb
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