Regulation

Feds Score $3 Billion Crypto Seizure From Silk Road Scammer

  • Property developer charged for stealing Bitcoin from Silk Road
  • James Zhong arrested, pleaded guilty to wire fraud on Nov. 4

   

Photographer: Angel Garcia/Bloomberg
Lock
This article is for subscribers only.

Manhattan prosecutors say they seized almost $3.4 billion in Bitcoin from a property developer who scammed the dark web marketplace Silk Road over a decade ago.

In what’s now the second-largest crypto seizure for the Department of Justice, investigators discovered more than 50,000 Bitcoin in the home of Georgia resident James Zhong in a raid carried out in November 2021. Zhong, a 32-year-old computer science graduate, was arrested and pleaded guilty to wire fraud last week.