U.S. authorities have announced one of their largest-ever cryptocurrency recoveries after they unearthed 50,676 Bitcoins linked to the notorious dark web marketplace, Silk Road. The amount of Bitcoin recovered is close to a valuation of $1.04 billion (Rs 8,228 crore) at the time of writing. The details were confirmed by Damian Williams, United States Attorney for the Southern District of New York. Silk Road, the online marketplace for darts, was launched in 2011 by Ross Ulbricht, who is currently serving a prison sentence.
The Bitcoin the recovery was made from an address in Georgia connected to James Zhong. Precious metals and cash worth $661,900 (approximately Rs. 5 crore) were among other items confiscated from Zhong’s property.
“In September 2012, Zhong executed a scheme to defraud Silk Road money and assets by creating a chain of approx. nine Silk Road accounts in a manner designed to conceal his identity, triggering more than 140 transactions in rapid succession to fool Silk Road’s withdrawal processing system to release approximately 50,000 Bitcoins from the payment system. Bitcoin-based payment to Zhong’s account, “a report of the United States Department of Justice (DoJ) wrote in a post.
Zhong then transferred the Bitcoins to various separate addresses also under his control.
The defendant pleaded guilty to defrauding this amount in 2012.
“Thanks for cutting-edge technology tracing cryptocurrencies and good old-fashioned police work, law enforcement has identified and recovered an impressive cache of criminal amounts. This case shows that we will not stop tracking the money, no matter how expertly concealed,” the DoJ post added.
At the time of its launch in 2011, Silk Road The market allows the purchase of anything including illegal drugs through Bitcoin.
Its creator is jailed Ulbricht auctioned some of his art from prison as NFTs to fund his legal proceedings.
Ulbricht is still there prison since October 2015 when he was sentenced to two life sentences.
Meanwhile, US authorities are taking measures to ensure crypto activities do not become a safe tool for financial crimes by scammers.
In February of this year, the DoJ tapped a seasoned computer crime prosecutor to lead National Cryptocurrency Enforcement Team.
At the time, US authorities charged a married New York couple with laundering Bitcoins that were at the time worth more than $4.5 billion (about Rs 33,750). These were stolen in the 2016 digital currency exchange hack Bitfinex.
