Topic: Geeky crypto thief, 32, jailed for hiding $3billion in Bitcoin in popcorn tin (Read 468 times)

In a normal circumstances, they'd have no choice and would have to return stolen funds to the victim, but in this case, the business he "stole" from was highly illegal Silk Road market place, which got shut down and its owner got sentenced to double lifetime.


Seriously? The guy was sitting on ~ $3 billions and your advice is that he should've focussed on earning more money?!. He could not spend that much during his entire lifetime even if he tried. How much is enough for you?

Starting to return the stolen bitcoin to the exchange it was obtained from is the last thing the government would do. The government's plan for the stolen bitcoin is to distribute it internally, which will force them to sell it for any amount.

I don't understand why chasing after girls is the first thought that individuals have when they suddenly become extremely wealthy. They can't get girls without money, or something like that.

Only a fool would consider pursuing women first after having gained money without making any investments that would continue to bring him income.

People's attitudes toward money and girls need to change. Money doesn't disappear from the planet, so that's how beautiful girls are. They shouldn't rush into girls out of greed for cash

You seem very emotionally invested in that story for some reason and are way overprotective of the guy, or you just relate to him a little bit too much.

Are we supposed to not discuss on a Bitcoin forum a story of a guy that was sitting on a (not quite) stolen stash worth >$3 billion because he might feel a bit upset when he reads it? Are we supposed to only say good or neutral things about the guy and his actions? What are you proposing really?

I didn't notice any particular bullying in this thread (defined as targeted, persistent harassment), it's mostly just people criticising his stupid decisions. If people around you are silent or supportive when you do stupid things - ditch them fast, for they are not your friends.

Photos are from the article and most likely were published by the guy himself on his social media.

We judge people and situations all the time, you just judged me for starting this topic. My judgement of him has zero effect on his life and the sentence he will get. If it did, he'd walk free.

Yes, fair enough. I was just saying that my information was based on what I had read from multiple places which is why I got it wrong. I wasn't saying that you were wrong.


Well, I'm not really saying that what he did was good. Nor that it was a robinhood-like act. I am just saying that some indirect good may have came from what he had done that might make it worth having a little bit of empathy and letting him serve his time rather than humiliating him publicly, which might not help him to be better once he has served his time. Justice has been served. Any victims of his crime were probably people who were better off not having those coins anyway. If innocent people were directly a victim of his crime, then I suppose that humiliation might be called for. I don't believe that is the case though.


That comment was more toward pawel, and perhaps I worded what I was trying to say wrongly. Not to matter anyway, I have expressed my opinion and there's not really much else to say to extend onto it. In terms of taking it personally, I am not. There's no reason to. I believe that it is one thing talking about the crime itself, it's another taking it out of context in a one-sided way. I try to be a fair person, so when I see things that are unfair I tend to express my opinion. It might come across that I'm taking it personally, but really I am just expressing that I think that things aren't being looked at in a fair way, and trying to shed some unique perspective.

All you really need to read is the blockchain. I'm stating something that is both provable via blockchain and which he admitted to in court. It's not a debatable matter.


You're drawing arbitrary lines for morality in order to call thievery "good". It's not exactly a Robinhood scenario and not nearly as black-and-white as you're trying to make it.


I didn't "condemn" him for these actions -- the only thing I condemned him for was being a poser on the forum. You seem to be taking this way too personally.

You've made two threads about it. One in press, one here. Forwarding the news into press without personal judgement is fine....but adding his photos, shaming, and bullying him after he has already been apprehended and is paying the price for his choices? Why is that necessary? Is it really because that is what you think a healthy society should do? In your version of society that would mean that there is no room for people to be human without their identity being permanently damaged, their emotions being permanently affected and makes the ability to be better severely hindered as the past would not be able to be left behind. I don't agree that a healthy society involves shaming. Shaming a 22 year old for hacking a marketplace that provided drugs, weapons, etc and living an unhealthy lifestyle onward from then, due to his upbringing, mental conditions, etc, after he has already paid the piper. Do you really think that is necessary, or healthy?

Sure you can say that you are just quoting headlines...but do you really agree with how mainstream media treat people? Do you hold the same values as mainstream media?

You can say that anyone is capable of making decisions. That doesn't mean that your judgement is correct. Unless one has heard from their experience and gained insight on their mind, no one should be able to judge.


I have read multiple things from multiple places. Either way, it was stolen from drug dealers, weapon providers, etc. Taking that money away from those kinds of people and leaving it in a popcorn tin, with some of it being used on this kids vices, probably did some positive for the world. In other words, were there really victims in this crime? Was more negative done, or more positive in the long term? That's a genuine question.


All the more reason to have some empathy, stop posting his photos, let the man do his time and then move on once he has served his time. Tying into what I said above, the crime itself probably served more positive for the world than it did negative. There's really no reason to treat this person the way you are both treating him. You should think about this from a different perspective, instead of condemning him for his issues and vices. 

Ouch. Right in the feels.

Don't shoot the messenger bud, I literally only quoted the headline of the linked article. Unless you're referring to me calling his life miserable - then sorry, but I'm sticking to what I wrote. If you seek fulfillment through splashing money just to impress whores - you're doing something very wrong and deserve shaming, that's what a healthy society should do.

And I don't see his alleged autism as an excuse for holding him accountable. He was perfectly capable of making his own decisions.


The saddest part is - he does have very average american-like looks. Few will understand.

Bruh. It was way more than that. 50k BTC at around $10 per coin, that's half a million.


He wasn't "suspected of autism," the article states he literally said in court he's autistic, was bullied as a child, and was using his wealth to attract women.



The girl on the right doesn't look entirely happy about it but you know what? He does. Good for him, he used his money to achieve happiness. If I were to judge him it would more be for lying on the forum about being an investment manager. Probably worthy of red trust actually. 

Hardly ingenious in comparison to what hackers and people who are even intermediate in the field of hacking are capable of doing. He was just in the right place at the right time with a skill-set that was somewhat niche at the time, and made less than $100 from exploiting a hole.

The saddest part about this thread is that if he had very average american-like looks, was not suspected of "autism" or whatever the crap people are saying here, then what other discussion would there be aside from the crime? The thread title "geeky" - the entire thread "nerd", "autism", etc. It's just pathetic.

I used to to think you were kind of a fine guy pawel7777, your posts are usually pretty good. Since coming to this thread though my view has changed, along with some other users who have jumped on the bandwagon.

I knew it! Thanks. But how do we know for sure it's the same guy? Some of his posts seems sound (somewhat) sensible, and the actions he took (as per article) make me imagine he was definitely on the dumb-side.

I remember that bet that he offered to Roger Ver. Iirc, Ver accepted eventually but Loaded backed away.

And just a reminder, if anyone presents themselves as a professional investor, hedge fund manager etc. it's 99% bullshit.

It was very ingenious. He got all that Bitcoins by exploiting a Dark Market site called the Silk Road. The exploit was said to have allowed him to withdraw many times from the site's wallet without making any new deposits. The site admins can't go the government/police for help, neither can they announce that they were hacked.

Elon Musk has Autism and one of my Engineering department head was autistic and dealing with him was a pain in the arse as he was too stubborn . So being autistic does not mean that they are not intelligent.

You need to have personality and money to attract women, 1 year sentence for a big heist is a small sentence while Ross Ulbricht who ran a website is serving double life sentence with trumped up charges .

It was actually mentioned in a court document that was released not too long ago, although I can't find it at the moment. It has also been mentioned in the media:

https://www.theblock.co/post/183749/silk-road-hacker-was-bitcoin-og-who-once-tried-to-bet-with-bitcoin-jesus-roger-ver

The last page of this thread has some great details about the case and how he was busted after nearly 10 years. It would appear that most of the time he was living off the proceeds from his BCH fork split rather than the BTC itself.

Wow! So he really did. Btw how did you get his info, or knew that he own that account. Although it looks like it really is based on the thread linked but i'm not so sure.

It could but yeah, mixing alone wont help, besides that he is mentally ill and no family background of having rich family,so having such luxury life is really suspicious.

He does have an account here:

Loaded

What's funny is he used to pretend that he made all his Bitcoin from trading and running a trading fund for wealthy investors... Of course that was all a lie. Not that there wasn't some level of ingenuity involved in how he actually achieved his BTC wealth.

This thread is what made him famous, at least on the forum anyway. It wasn't too long after he posted this that people started figuring out where his BTC really came from.

Mixing alone wouldn't help him much if he was splashing money on expensive speedboats etc. Assuming he wasn't a high-earner himself, it was just a matter of time for him to get red-flagged.

But you can't expect too much from a guy who stores $3bn worth in a popcorn tin in his bathroom.




I was wondering that too. I think it's very likely, considering the collectible coins and the fact he was in the Bitcoin early, and I think that the majority of the early adopters were active on the bitcointalk, or at least familiar with it.

He hacked $41 a long time ago, it happened to grow into that value in the future. He did not hack $3 billion. On the other hand, SBF embezzled and hid this amount, spent it to grow FTX fraudulently, manipulated the crypto market, ruined many lives and liquidated billions worth of traders that otherwise would not have been liquidated as a result. The two are not in any way comparable.



The value at the time the coins were hacked from SilkRoad, was $41. He did not steal $3 billion. That is just the market value at the time of seizure.


It has already been said by multiple outlets that when coins are not auctioned, they are sold on Coinbase. The U.S. Government would not be using Binance to trade these coins especially after the CTFC suit against them.

The only reason why the guy Zhong was apprehended is that he lack the knowledge of privacy and this also happened to a lot of newbies cause they always believe the BTC transaction are anonymous while it was actually pseudonymous.
Having said that, it is easy to understand the naiveness of the guy in possess of the BTC base on how he wants to send the BTC on a lavish lifestyle to help him score women
Assuming he didn't make use of the crypto tumbler website, making use of an anonymous crypto exchange like Crypton Exchange by exchanging the BTC to Monero the story would have changed.                                                                                                               

More like for privacy—private way. The guy is not knowledgeable enough how bitcoin transaction works. Mixers do exists now and lots of them yet we see another guy caught because of sending tainted coins directly on CEX. Well, as he is mentally-illed so i understand.

Also, the guy got collectible coins, shout out for our physical bitcoin collectibles out there, i wonder if anyone made a transaction between him or he has an account here.

Mmm, not really. I think it was created just for profit. The operator is serving a double lifetime, but the verdict was highly controversial and very unfair.
You can find more details here:
https://freeross.org/


There's a problem here, if he stole (or however we want to call that) bitcoins from users, then it would be expected for authorities to make at least some attempt to identify original owners and try to reimburse them instead of just selling their assets and keeping the profits.
But if he stole from SilkRoad-owned stash, then the feds could seize that as proceeds from illegal activities.


I think that's broadly in line with the legal definition in most countries, but the "to gain unauthorised access" is the key here. From what I read, it was not really the case.
Possibly, with a help of a good lawyer, he could possibly get away without serving any time, but since all his money got seized, he's unlikely to afford one. A little prison time probably will do him good.

Good thing you said "stealing" 
There is no good stealing. It's still a bad moral practice. I for sure wasn't active in the crypto space during the times of Silk Road marketplace but I think the person behind it created the platform for good intentions

The Government call such platforms "illegal" because they don't regulate them. More like how they have demonized Bitcoin over the years, but what the guy stole was actually Bitcoins from people. Not just from a thin air.

Same thing, he took advantage

From my understanding of Hacking, it's the practice of recognizing and then taking advantage of the vulnerability in a website, app or computer system, to gain unauthorized access to data and funds like in this case because those stolen funds did not belong to the geeky Crypto thief.

That guy just proved the meme that we're seeing on socials about claiming that he's got bitcoin so b***** comes to him and make him as their man.

Whether he did good business with that money and not after the girls, it still going to end up with the criminal act of swindling that lot of money. In the first place, stealing money and using it for whichever purpose (good or bad) that he may come up with is a no-no.

Hard to believe he got off with only a year.  Makes one wonder what SBF will get away with.  Let's see if SBF's was $21 billion and his was 3, maybe he'll get 7 years.      As mentioned above, if they were liquidating that much in a short, it certainly would increase the supply and consequently decrease the price. 

Ross Ulbricht (owner of Silk Road) defence and the prosecution counsel had an agreement that any stolen BTC recovered from Silk Road would be forfeited to the US government.

I think it's his lifestyle that attracted the attention of security agency. He was living a lavish lifestyle, lodging in the most expensive hotel suites, clubbing, and partying. The dude invested more in real estates and also had 7 powerful boats and it's interesting to note that despite all this extravagant lifestyle, he has only spent 5% of the stolen BTC.

Now that the feds have rushed to sell off 9,861 bitcoins already, what's the rush to sell it for? What purpose do they have to use the money for? What if that bitcoin was not discovered? What would they have sold to obtain the $$215,738,155 they have already sold out? I don't know why I don't just find this story funny. It's not even as if citizens are going to reap the benefits of this money. Well I think that's why Bitcoin price is still struggling to maintain $30k, it may also be a wrong assumption by me.



I was not aware of that, but @Cantsay already mentioned it. That guy just got so greedy; how could he have even held up such an asset to himself and even used it so unreasonably?

This guy is a f**king moron, $3 billion dollars is a whole lots money, he could have done better things with this money rather than sleeping around with girls, does this means he had no life goals, or maybe business ideas or something?
Really pathetic and I think he clearly deserves whatever punishment that he's meeted with.

Probably yes, I myself have been wondering what lead to the sharp decline in the price of bitcoin yesterday, clearly this was the reason, I really hope that the market recovers soon though.

Which kind of begs a question - is stealing from an illegal site illegal itself? I don't think there's any identified victim in this case. If there were - bitcoins should've been returned to them. I don't think the "no victim - no crime" would be applicable here, but the whole situation is still kind of weird, especially considering he didn't hack the site, just took advantage of the glitch:

---

The article says they have sold the first batch and will be selling 4 more during the calendar year. So it's not like they're dumping it all at once.

Ahh, I think I already posted this last week. James Zhong captured for $3.4 billion worth stolen bitcoin- USA cracks hesit

From what the news analysis was done, he got the bitcoins from the dark web and it was merely a back door to some sort of algorithm glitch. Whenever they bought any illegal stuff and clicked deposit the bitcoin, they received the double amount. Apparently, James was smart enough to find the loophole and he worked straight for 6 hours on the strategy to get as much Bitcoin as he could.

Considering he was just 22, it did not occur to him whether he was stealing. Plus, he was in the dark web + crypto, so yeah what the hell, he anyways started pulling bitcoins and finally stopped at 50,000 bitcoins.

The value increased over time, and he ended up being a billionaire by 2021. Cool story.

He is under trial right now and lawyers are pushing hard to just get him two years prison time and get back as quickly as he could for the party time. Rich!

That's a huge amount of money getting traded at one time. It's a huge dump happening, so the price will certainly be affected. However, if that's really the main reason, then I guess the dump is just temporary since Coinbase has over $1.6 billion in 24-hour trading volume. Alternatively, the best idea is to divide the amount of Bitcoin to be traded in different exchanges, if the government allows it.

Right now, Binance has the biggest trading volume with $12 billion daily. So, if some trades are done in Binance, then there won't be much effect on the overall market price.

https://coinmarketcap.com/rankings/exchanges/

We have similar thread here, James Zhong captured for $3.4 billion worth stolen bitcoin- USA cracks hesit. It's better if we can continue the discussion there.

This is just fucking crazy for him someone to have the intention to steal such a big amount of money. He wants to please his slots to believe him that he has the money to spend on them. His reasoning is a bit detrimental to my perception of having an odd reason of living a luxury lifestyle. Some persons can be very funny when it comes to why they want to be rich probably illegally. This is not a good reason to be a theft for crying out loud. If he was not jailed then any consequential treatment he was given should teach him a lesson.

$3 billion is a whole lot of money! According to the report, this is actually the highest amount of stolen bitcoin recovered from an individual and I think this could be the reason why bitcoin price is still struggling at the $30,000 market price.

Silk Road is not an exchange. It is a dark web market place that has been shot down about a decade ago by the American government, so that's the reason the recovered bitcoin could not be returned.

He could've get away with all of this if he wasn't flexing and he has paid his dues with the government, maybe probably should've gone to one of those Caribbean islands because he's basically set for life with that money if he had made a plan to get away with but as you've said, woman is her undoing. He's lucky though that he's getting a really short sentencing considering his connection to Silk Road.

So it was pussy that got him caught after all? Never underestimate the pussy!
The funny irony is the fact that a thief was caught by king of thieves aka government, you know what they say, when you steal from a thief, you are the king of thieves.🤣

Indirectly, he was the one who gave himself up for the government to investigate him. Now if the government sells off all that Bitcoin they hold on to, that's going to have a big impact on the price. I don't think this case is really so good news, because there is no way the government can return those bitcoins because of where they came from.

Thinking that things like this only exist in movies but in the real world it also exists. It's quite sad to see him steal Bitcoin with such a large value but only use it to impress hoes.

That's true, it's quite patetic, but maybe he used to be a victim of bullying and didn't have the opportunity to be able to get women and whatever he wanted, so things like that motivated him to hack and steal Bitcoins to fulfill his greed. Very poor.

I think you're all being a bit hard on him. At the time, he was 22 years of age. Of course, this is still adult-hood and he should be growing his morals and values as a person by this stage. However we don't know his upbringing. We don't know his circumstances. We don't know his mind. If we want to judge a book by its cover, we can probably assume that he may have been bullied at school, probably not a part of the jock team and probably did not ever get a girl that he wanted...maybe not even a sexual experience.

With these assumptions in mind, if he landed on this large sum of money which at the time was worth less than $100, then it turned into over a billion...how is someone supposed to grow personally in order to manage that money and do something good? Especially if there is any form of mental health deficit or mental disorder that is also in the mix. Alcohol, cocaine, women...that's how the movies have programmed people (especially young males) to enjoy money, or what you can do if you have a lot of it. All of which turn into habits until you can't do it anymore...so this guy probably just kept on doing it because it was always within his means. So in my opinion, I see a young kid with probably not the best track of personal development, possibly slight mental disorder or low mental health, and fueled it with further toxic actions, while not knowing what to do with so much money other than what he has probably seen on the TV.

It's pretty appalling for people to assume that he is autistic and also insult him on the board for what he did. I feel sorry for him if anything, and I commend him that for holding on to all of those coins for so long for over 10 years. By no means am I endorsing, supporting or commending his actions overall, it's definitely not the right way to go about things. I just don't think that he deserves this kind of hate and publicity. Just like when every other DeFi smart contract is hacked, it should just be news and everyone should just let it go. Let him serve his prison time and start again with nothing when he is out.

If people want something to be angry at, it's the U.S. government for confiscating the coins and hurting the bitcoin market, where most likely not one cent will benefit the people of America.

Also. He is not a scammer. He is a hacker. He found a hole, he expoited it, he profited. If silkroad was secure, he would not have gotten those coins in the first place. He did not trick or deceive anyone. There was technical skill involved in what he did.

By mentally disabled, do you mean autistic? Well, some autistic people can be intelligent, but autism does cause problems in relating to others, although I don't know to what extent in his case since he studied at the University.

On the other hand it is pathetic that he spent a lot of money to try to impress women and didn't attract them. I imagine that the ones in the photos are escorts. Very strange because a guy with a lot of money always attracts women interested, no matter how ugly he is, who wants to get his money but at least he fucks them. The article also states that he abused cocaine and alcohol.


Me neither.

I think I have already responded to this same story, although in the economics section. This is not breaking news. This happened at least a week ago.

What surprised me was that this Zhong was only sentenced for a year even if he stole a staggering $3 billion in Bitcoin. I don't know how many cases he is facing, but I hope this one-year sentence is only for wire fraud to which he pleaded guilty. There might be others. I read somewhere that he is also involved in illegal drugs.

I think I replied to a thread talking about the same person some days ago, and at first thought it was his friend that gave tip to the government about him being I'm possession of that amount of bitcoin but later @NotATether confirmed that it was not it friend that sold him out instead it was his own action that made the government suspicious of him which later led them to searching his properties and later found the bitcoin inside a Cheekos tin.


It's very unlikely since the coin was stolen from a dark web it's impossible for the government to release the coin back to where they came from that they government and I'm also not sure if the duration counts but it has been 10 years since it was stolen.

LOL, So in this case, the federal government will be benefiting from all that Bitcoin. It's really a big catch. And the guy who stole the bitcoin must really be so unknowledgeable on how to go about those bitcoins he stole. Sending Bitcoin to Coinbase (a centralized exchange) from a wallet that holds about 50,000 bitcoins was so unwise of him, and there was not even a reasonable thing he was using the money for. Well, this should serve as a lesson for people who solely depend on trading their bitcoin on centralized exchanges. If a person holds such an amount of bitcoin in their custody, it's supposed not to be sent to all kinds of platforms because it can be tracked. And Coinbase is an exchange that also saves user IP addresses, so I believe it was not even difficult to catch the guy.

But you can make yours, too. It's not a must that the headline should be the exact one as that from the source.  
I am not surprised, it's an article from dailymail.co.uk with their usual stupid headlines that are nothing but clickbaits.

Basically, a hard drive that may have had the addresses containing Bitcoins was stashed in a popcorn tin. Let him serve his sentence, I have no pity for thieves, scammers, or hackers.

What a fucking moron that guy. Stealing bitcoins and instead of using it for something worthwhile like idk, doing something about his physique (no fatshaming), he used it to tip hoes? That was rich.
Classic old case of "If I have more money more girls will talk to me", although wouldn't really put that much blame to him since he admitted to his crimes and because well, he's mentally disabled.
Something something legislations, they need to liquidate the assets first in order to properly audit it and file on their reports, AFAIK they also need to determine the exact denomination of the coins in today's dollar value which is why they are also converting bitcoins into cash.

I know. I didn't make the headline.


Bitcoin was trading much lower back then when he stole it.
But shame on him for not destroying that popcorn tin before cops got their hands on it...


Because the site was highly illegal and its operator (Ross Ulbricht) is serving a double life time.

He was not jailed for hiding but rather for stealing bitcoins. This is huge amount and this is really crazy knowing that how those platforms could easily get stolen such huge amount of money out of their platform.

He just is victim of his need because for wanting to have luxurious lifestyle and slept with different woman he do this crime which is totally crazy act to do by certain people.

If that amount stolen will be back on its original destination maybe we can see a good effect to the market.

OP, to save me the stress, you did not post the link to the thread here.

Well, it's really a huge amount that was pulled from the Bitcoin market cap, which I think is a reason why the price dropped. but this case looks unfair to me. Instead of the government selling the bitcoin, why not ask for those bitcoins to be returned to the exchange or platform they were stolen from?

The headline is misleading. He was not jailed for hiding bitcoins.

I posted this yesterday in "Press", but this story surely deserves a topic on the main board.

Geeky crypto thief, 32, jailed for hiding $3billion in Bitcoin in popcorn tin admitted to trying to use the cash to score women - as government offloads stolen gains on Coinbase
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-11985885/Bitcoin-scammer-admits-using-money-stolen-gains-impress-women-hes-sentenced-year.html


In short, an autist has been sitting for 10 years on a bitcoin stash worth over $3 billion, cashing out parts of it to try to impress hoes. That's a pathetic story and shows how miserable life without a higher purpose is even if you have tonnes of money. But there's also other interesting mention there:


Hmm, could it be that this has something to do with Bitcoin struggling to keep above the $30k?