Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

Thanks to CTOnews.com netizens for their witty meow clue delivery! Nov. 8, Monday, local time, the U.S. Department of Justice announced that about $3.36 billion worth of stolen bitcoins were seized during a 2021 raid on the homes of cryptocurrency investors James Zhong.

On Friday, local time, James Zhong pleaded guilty to wire fraud in September 2012 and could face up to 20 years in prison. The Justice Department said it seized about 50676 bitcoins worth more than $3.36 billion during a search of James Zhong's home in Gainesville, Georgia, on November 9, 2021.

This is the second largest cryptocurrency seizure by the US Department of Justice to date after the agency announced in February that it had seized $3.6 billion of stolen encrypted currency in connection with the 2016 hacking of the cryptocurrency exchange Bitfinex.

It is reported that James Zhong stole bitcoins from the illegal dark web forum Silk Road (Silk Road). The Silk Road was launched in 2011 but was shut down by FBI in 2013, and its founder, Ross William Ross William Ulbricht, is currently in prison.

"over the past decade, the whereabouts of the stolen bitcoins has become a mystery worth more than $3.3 billion," said Damian Williams, the US prosecutor.

James Zhong is said to have launched a hacker attack using loopholes in the Silk Road. Tyler Hatcher, the special agent in charge of the IRS criminal investigation, said James Zhong used a "very complex strategy" to steal Bitcoin from the Silk Road.

Hatcher revealed that in September 2012, James Zhong created nine fraudulent accounts on the Silk Road, each with 2 to 2000 bitcoins. He then quickly conducted more than 140 transactions in a row, deceiving the market's withdrawal processing system and releasing about 50000 bitcoins to his account. James Zhong then transfers Bitcoin to various wallet addresses he controls.

According to public records, James Zhong is the president and CEO of JZ Capital LLC, a startup that was registered in Georgia in 2014. According to profiles on LinkedIn, a professional social networking site, James Zhong focuses on "investment and venture capital".

The profile also shows that James Zhong was "a big investor in early Bitcoin, very familiar with the inner workings of Bitcoin" and has software development experience in computer programming languages. James Zhong's social media profiles include photos of him on a yacht, in front of a plane and at a football match.

But these types of hacking attacks did not end with the demise of the Silk Road, and cryptocurrency platforms are still vulnerable to criminals.

In October 2022, Binance, the world's most traded cryptocurrency exchange, was hacked, resulting in a loss of $570 million. A loophole in the smart contract allows hackers to take advantage of the cross-link bridge BSC Token Hub, which in turn allows hackers to withdraw the local cryptocurrency BNB on the platform, the company said.

In March 2022, another hacker discovered a loophole in Ronin Network, a decentralized financial platform, and stole more than $600 million worth of cryptocurrency.

According to a report released by blockchain analysis firm Chainalysis, a total of $1.9 billion worth of cryptocurrencies were stolen from hackers this year as of July 2022, compared with nearly $1.2 billion in the same period in 2021.

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