Topic: The Man Who Stole Over 51,680 Bitcoin (Read 531 times)

For a cryptocurrency user, the most important thing to look at is privacy. I believe that no matter how much centralized exchanges claim to be secure and have strong privacy, it will not be inappropriate to trust them, because just as the accused was caught in a trap in this incident, any Mellitus person will be caught in the same way. By deducing the transaction history of the fool, he can return as a victim of his deception.

And above all, the second lesson is that centralized exchanges are insecure. To date, Binance, the largest exchange among exchanges, has also been hacked by hackers, so the rest is left to say. In addition to being hacked, centralized exchanges have the risk of bankruptcy, less certainty, and less privacy. So, it is better to use a hardware wallet to eliminate or reduce all these risks than to keep your funds in exchanges in an unsafe way rather than depending on others.

I really understand your caution about links that can cause harm after clicking them. The only thing I know is that every link attached here is very safe for anyone to click, including the videos in Op. Attaching phishing links or links that can harm other users is not recommended on forums according to rule number 6.


The story in Op teaches us that evil will never last forever, there will come a certain time when someone must be responsible for what they did in the past.

Bitcoin OGs are men too. They commit mistakes, sometimes stupid mistakes. Sometimes they aren't careful enough. They also have accounts in centralized exchanges. And sometimes they too would undergo KYC process. Although they're probably strong Bitcoin believers, even contributing to Bitcoin's development, they too still find value in gold and other precious metals and even cash. And they diversify. And while some attaches certain virtues to Bitcoin, they could also do some stealing.


Which is what a Chinese is, Asian.

In the end, the cryptocurrency exchange that successfully unveiled Jimmy Zhong's identity emerged as a hero for American law enforcement. Regardless of the perspective one takes, theft is inherently wrong, even when it occurs on the shadowy and illegal darknet markets. Jimmy's actions remained criminal and perilous. With 51k BTC in hand, that's a huge amount. Even if Jimmy can protect his BTC using mixers or coin joins, wouldn't it be risky to sell it off in the market right now?

From this, we learn how crucial KYC is for both businesses and Bitcoin holders. At the very least, KYC ensures that stolen funds can be prevented with a slightly higher success rate than non KYC exchanges. And for individuals who prioritize privacy above all else, there are still Bitcoin mixers ready to lend a hand.

If we were in Jimmy's position, we might experience some regret, don't you think? After all, it's a substantial sum of money that could ease our financial concerns for at least a few years (with the current exchange rate).

I don't think so. If he didn't call 911 to report his stolen money I think he would still have been aprihended, because the kyc will still involves his identity except he left the $800 worth if Bitcoin there in that exchange. This is another problem of custodiall wallet. It's only a custodiall wallet that will ask for kyc. He just made a very big mistake but I still doubt that it's the call he made by reporting to the police of his stolen money that got him arrested. I think maybe the kyc he submitted with his identity which the Bitcoin address was under whatch list. Maybe from there dey discover that it was him. Probably he didn't call the police again because he has gotten his money back that's why he became more suspicious.

Meh, I don't really think so. After spending a good amount of time in this industry I knew for certain that there are certain people who are more than happy to diversify their wallets and keep a stash with them secluded on a spot only they would know. The government may have found his 50000 bitcoins or whatever, but the thing is, Silk road was a massive thing in the dark web, acting as its own de facto version of E-bay. So I'm guessing he has a stash hidden somewhere only he would know and he's probably sitting comfortably on a hundred or thousands of bitcoin. He's smart enough to think that this may happen to him one day, he probably got it figured out to a t as well.

I love learning and using theoretical constructs to better understand the world around me. Naturally therefore, I studied physics in college and worked as a research scientist for five years. I published my findings in peer reviewed journals five times over that period, first on organic solar cells and then on EuO thin-film crystals. My goal during this period of my life was simply to expand the frontier of human knowledge.

Now, my goals have shifted. I want to use economic theory as a means to abolish the use of coercion and agression amongst mankind. Just as slavery has been abolished most everywhere, I believe violence, coercion and all forms of force by one person over another can come to an end. The most widespread and systemic use of force is amongst institutions and governments, so this is my current point of effort. The best way to change a government is to change the minds of the governed, however. To that end, I am creating an economic simulation to give people a first-hand experience of what it would be like to live in a world without the systemic use of force.

Calling up 911 with using your own home phone? thats suicide or even using up your own sim? We know that nowadays that there are places on which sim cards does have that particular KYC or verification on which means that if you do really show up those kind of information then pretty sure you are really that throwing up yourself into them. For those who had made out these huge stealing
then it would really be that impossible that you wont really be that caring about your identity on which you would really be that be careful on whatever transactions you would really be able to do.
One mistake then you would really be ending up on prison on which you do really know and you arent that blind on that one.

For using up mixers then he might really be able to get out but of course there's no way that you would assure though because any transactions could really be able to
stop or would be halted if ever you are really that being traced up. So if you do get caught and if its bailable then you could really be
able to say that this wont really be that a problem.

The outlaws have outperform them and at this point it obviously clear that most of the court sentence are lesser for financial crimes, I also notice this in my region where most of the guys that are involved in internet-related crimes are given lesser sentences or even a our nut as a fine to be paid against prison time sentence.

These things have affected the impact and extent of the law in some cases and at some point we have to realize that the federal laws have a lot of lip-hols most especially when it comes to assets and itseits management,  or what has been taken in terms of decentralized assets,  most at times the law officers are all involved in this corruption sentencing since there may have collected a lot from the criminals and do not account to them in the court of law.

Imagine how successful you are on stealing thousands of bitcoin but you failed on a simple thing that every hacker in our current time won't do which is KYC. Hackers or any person who knows that their bitcoin or assets aren't clean are scared or won't even try submitting KYC (atleast their own identity). There are different ways to sell those bitcoin, maybe he's just desperate at that time to sell his bitcoin that why he submitted a KYC. I wonder if other of the asset that he has on that vault aside from cryptos was stolen.

I would say that if he was a smart person who did this knowing what they did, they would have probably used a p2p situation and a high quality mixer to avoid this kind of result. Obviously he wasn't really that smart and basically ended up being incredibly stupid to make a move like this.

Crypto is filled with people who ended up with a lot of lucky get rich stories, like people who got money because someone else sent to wrong address type of situation, those people don't know what to do. This of course is a huge number and makes people question the situation, but the reality is that we are going to end up with a situation that could be a little bit more riskier and wouldn't have caught if it was a smarter hacker or something.

This perhaps presents a nice case of a rare occasion when someone made a huge mistake and, thanks to KYC, actually got caught. I like it how his sentence was so low (in addition to funds getting seized, of course), but I don't get why Ross Ulbricht is still in prison for a crime from which nobody suffered directly (there was no violence and even no theft involved).
This guy was extremely careless, though, as he was living a lavishing lifestyle with private jets and parties, aged 28, with no explanation of the source of income. I'm surprised why he wasn't caught earlier. And wait, the video says that he actually got caught because of calling 911 when he got robbed. To me, it doesn't quite add up with the KYC $800 thing, so maybe the KYC wasn't important after all.

You are right and I completely agree with you, for this guy though, like I believe that I have mentioned before, according to the video, he has been using mixers and coin join services to move and sell those bitcoins, don't know what actually went wrong with him to have decided to with mixers move $800 worth of bitcoin to an exchange where he probably knows that kyc is mandatory.
Well, the video didn't mention whether he moved the bitcoin to the exchange through a mixer service, but I guess if he had done that, maybe he wouldn't have been caught.

The video didn't actually say that moving the coins and goin through kyc is the reason why he was caught, in the video, it was said that he calling 911 was actually what got him in the trail of the police in the first place, so if he hadn't called 911 to report his stolen money, he probably would have still be safe even after moving those bitcoin to an exchange and going through the kyc process.

If calculating based on the time it happened we can say that they have sold or still holding but what most people don't still get from this is that, if he wasn't caught till date I don't think he would have still own such volume of bitcoin but what got him tracked down was the act of sending to exchange without knowing too well that he is on a target and I believe any hack that happened within any exchange and the funds moved out the exchange owner might likely put the address that stole the money in a watchlist to monitor the movement and operation of that wallet and if it happens that those funds are being sent to reputable exchange then I don't think such person can escape from being caught.

As far as I know, they decided to sell those bitcoins in portions, and I think they have sold 2 portions so far from that. They've even decided the timeframes of when they will sell the portions regardless of the price of the asset at that time which indicates that they don't really care about the money that much because if that was the case, they could hold them up until the market goes up and then sell them to get more money out of the assets instead of doing this.

However, coming back to the topic, I believe the guy did what everyone would have done if they had gotten the opportunity because you can't refuse money when you don't already have a lot of it, it's just that he made a few mistakes along the way which got him caught, otherwise, he would have been living the dream life he might have thought about.

Why he didn't use the mixer or coin join to hide the transaction?. I think he was very careless did not think this way, and was very confident in doing the transaction on the KYC exchange. but I also don't respect to him, and no matter how great he is stole a thousand BTC. I'm grateful he was arrested, and I don't care where he kept the rest of BTC. This story lesson to us to care about our privacy, especially for people who always use the centralization exchange, because we can't hide our identity if we have registered where must proof the KYC.

Reading through the story, the first lesson to learn is to be aware that KYC is a risk that can cause one to lose their assets in some circumstances. What if the government wants to cease every individual asset? That means they can just connect with some of this centralized exchange and get every user's KYC details, and they can just go ahead and do whatever they want with the information. They can even keep tracking the wallet-to-wallet  transactions of users until they have gotten the information they want before they can decide to act. Well, Jimmy caused it all for himself; he hijacked a huge amount of Bitcoin from that exchange. He should have use any of the available Bitcoin mixers, as at that time, he would have mixed those Bitcoins and transferred them to different wallets. Then, he would have only transferred a small amount of the bitcoin to a wallet that he could use as his hot wallet. If he had done so, despite the fact that he passed that KYC, I don't think they would have known that there was a huge sum of bitcoin in his wallet. He made a big mistake.

I think the OP might not have been aware that he was referring to a forum member called Loaded who created a thread asking to swap his BCH for BTC when the fork was about to take place: @RogerVer lets make a deal. At least 60k, my BTU for your BTC.

The whole story about him being an awkward and shy individual with low-confidence who tried to buy friends and friendships by lavishing BTC and wealth from BTC on people he wanted to like him. The fact he received just a year in jail as the sentence when he was in possession of over 51,000 Bitcoin means the Courts took everything in context before passing the sentence.

maybe he receive short time in prison because the us authorities  had hard feelings over silk road case (so they didn't see victim when btc was stolen )  they all thieves including fbi.

Regarding with this history, how many bitcoin left or holding by Jimmy Zhong during he have stole Over 51,680 Bitcoin and seems small approximately $800 values used for depositing in exchange account. I am excited to know continues of this story exactly with some assets left due Jimmy Zhong have stole many bitcoin but there are possibility hold left his bitcoin assets without take access by the IRS agents? I  afraid when have hacking cases get under arrested there are not transparent about fund of how many bitcoin confiscated by Policemen due many hacker success arrested but they not talk about bitcoin fund have been in their wallet.

Its excited to hear if Jimmy Zhong can answer with public question about his bitcoin left, still in his wallet or have been confiscated by Policemen.

This is a sad event, imagine someone who should be contributing to the Bitcoin development positively haven't been around from the early days, turning out to become one of the biggest bad actors in the community, anyways I believe no thieve will go unpunished, and imagine how such a small amount from the stolen funds have been tagged and no useable, because of the source, well way back it was easy to accumulate such amount of bitcoin with just a few bucks but he decided to allow his greed to overtake his sense of reasoning but so also the sentence to me is very short compared to his total amount in fraud as at the time he was finally arrested.

This is very interesting to read and again this has distinguished bitcoin from other cryptocurrencies and also gave them a proper perspective on what people say about bitcoin which is false; the statement that says bitcoin is used to conceal criminal activities which is not. Stolen bitcoins are easily tracked by agencies since those coins will have already been tagged as stolen, pending on when the identity information of the person will be revealed, the coins will be tracked and the owner can be caught immediately it’s linked to an identity.

Jimmy Zhong is not spending a long time in prison, he was only sentenced to one year and a day in prison, and i think that is because he pleaded guilty and already forfeited the funds to the government, and from what i read, another reason for the lenient sentence is because he didn't use the darknet website to purchase or sell anything illegal, i guess his only activity there was exploiting that vulnerability.
Zhong's case is different in my honest opinion, i would not put him in the same category of hackers like this, or those who create services to defraud people, yes he exploited a glitch in the silk road marketplace, but take note that the silk road is an illegal darknet marketplace, and Zhong even claims that the site's owner Ross Ulbricht sent him more BTC's after he explained how he was able to exploit the vulnerability and steal from the darknet website.

Wow this is magnificent and how will someone with such amount of possessions do KYC for merely $800 and now it already got him to doom and I really feel pity for him but how on earth will someone be able to steal over such amount of bitcoin from an exchange and took so much time to uncover in the states and it is also evident that the criminal really lived an expensive life and I can’t even imagine him in the person
This is also a wake up call that no one is above scam and we should take our security and privacy very personal as this also an example that we can be tracked down if the need from the KYC.

To this, I can only respond by saying, "You can't keep hiding your bad record forever." There will be moments when you forget how to continue hiding your previous movements so that you are not found.

This, I believe, was Jimmy Zhong's fate. He failed to realize that his horrible deeds from 2012 have been haunting him by the American government. He had been playing it safe all along, but after years of the Silk Road exchange not knowing who he was, it was only a little mistake to expose his ID to an exchange to transfer $800 that brought him to light.

That is what the United States government will do but what we don't know is whether the seized stolen assets include all the stolen bitcoin assets with no one sold by Zhon. From 2012 until his arrest in 2023, he kept them all in his portfolio. That seems impossible in some way.

That serves him right, the way he got the money was not legitimate and if he also faces the worst predicament of his life throughout the whole process, he would have better understanding on the law of life which states what you throws up comes down, he's not the first to have been involved in this kind of heist in which their bubbles blasted along the way, i hope by now he would have been regretting many of his past actions that led to this.

This is what he actually looks like:



https://www.cnbc.com/2023/10/17/crypto911.html

And I think just like any other cyber criminals, it will just take one mistake in crypto before you can be trace and found out. In his case he did a KYC on a exchange and that's why he was able to be trace IRS and connect everything him as the Silk Road hackers.

This is not the first time though that we have heard this kind of missteps and sure will not be the last.

Yeah, I agree with you that wrongdoings will always make someone pay for their such activity. But, the guy didn't store close to 3 Billion dollars worth of Bitcoin because in 2012 the rate of Bitcoin wasn't too high and 51680 Bitcoin were less than $1M in value back then. The guy hacked around $400k to $690K in those days as Bitcoin's value was below $14 in 2012 and they weren't worth the way they are worth today.

The hackers are really big threat to the community but unfortunately very few of those get punished as most of them are so smart that it would be difficult for governmental agencies to trace them. This guy was a newbie type of hacker because a good hacker must have enough knowledge about technology and they would never do something that Jimmy did back then.

A hacker would never ever do his/her KYC approval because hackers know that how sensitive their privacy and anonymity is and that's why they would never do anything to make out their privacy compromisable. The guy was just a script kiddie who really didn't had proper knowledge about hacking.

 

The story is one reason not to trust centralized exchanges that they keep our data private.  If centralized exchanges are truly protecting their customers data, then it should have not been leaked to any institution.

I believe on those early days, Bitcoin was considered/believed an anonymous coin that can mask someone identity, so that maybe one of the reason why the person got careless.


It is a normal practice for the authority to ransack the property of a suspected person.  They do authorized robbery in the name of justice lol.

I think that question is left to the particular government that arrested him and whether the fund had been release or not. This kind of fund is most ceased and the United States government determines what they will do with it whether to auction it or keep for when it is appropriate for it to be sold.

I am happy that the culprit had finally became a changed man that is ready to help the government and other projects too to stay safe equip there sites with tools that will prevent any bug that is capable of causing damages. Many of the exchanges we have today would have keep tools in place that will tightened there security and prevent hacking attempts.

I don't know why I like this story but this shows the extent these exchanges can freely give out information to third parties without our consent, and I wonder who else has access to this Information   Tbh I wish we went back in time where KYC was not a btw just how did this KYC requirements become industry standard for the big exchanges  

Coming back to this story, I don't buy this idea of a smart guy such as Zhong can steal this lump sum of coins and knows the darkweb can fall for such a silly mistake, why didn't he use a mixer or non KYC exchange...doesn't add up!!!

It can be said that this is the first lesson in understanding the importance of maintaining privacy on the blockchain, and that the blockchain alone does not provide complete privacy, but rather many other precautions must be added in parallel. I am sure that this thief was not aware of any privacy details, although he seems to be the most conservative about it as long as he uses Darkweb. An $800 mistake cost him millions of dollars and a prison sentence. He could have avoided all of this if he had taken the time to find the right way to use that money, but I can't blame him too much since at that time there were no mixers to my knowledge.

Jimmy was a young boy, he has a safe in stone.

Wait, the subject of wire fraud is money. This story happened in 2012. But did bitcoin have then (as now) any legal status, that is, official recognition? I don't think so. Then how was Jimmy prosecuted? If he had stolen money in this way, there would have been no questions.
 
It would be interesting to know more about this part. How were bitcoins kept at Jimmy Zhong’s place?

and also how important it is to hide bitcoins in such a way that no dog will find it. Literally.

I don't see how that should be good news. He stole and jeopardised the happiness of many and the exchange itself. He should've been given more years in the penitentiary. His action should be condemned in totality.

They had to mask him to keep him safe. Yet, he didn't think of the economic safety of those whose Bitcoin he stole.

It is unfortunate that this is the end of an old man in the Bitcoin community who had good contributions to the development of Bitcoin in the early stages, this is really strange.

I do not know what made a man with this experience and who could have a great future turn into one of the biggest Bitcoin thieves and end up in prison. Such a man should have had great ambitions and a much better future than this.

The other surprising thing about the story is that how did a professional man like him make a huge mistake that led to him getting caught by approving the KYC application?

Actually I shared this story months ago already. 

Here is the link of a nice documentary and my thread again, I guess you missed it.
https://bitcointalksearch.org/topic/great-new-youtube-documentary-about-btctalk-member-jimmy-zhong-mb300sd-5462157

Some days ago I saw there is a new documentary on youtube but I guess it's basically the same story.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Nq3ye-QCyM&pp=ygULamltbXkgemhvbmc%3D

The one in my thread is very well researched in my opinion.

Anyway it's a tough story and I feel sorry for the guy. He seems like a good person and the punishment is WAY too high. They took everything he had, not only the silk road coins, which is crazy.

At the time that bitcoin was not worth so much, so I would guess he thought he could fly under the radar for some time and then spend those coins without taking any protective measure to hide who he was.

A big mistake as we have seen, as not only he stole from one of the most famous darknet markets, but he also seems to have kept all of those coins which are now worth a fortune, and in that case not even the US government could allow itself to look the other way and it decided to go for him as soon as it got a hint of his real identity.

On the time that you had really experienced up some exploit on which you could really be able to see yourself that making rich since you are really that able to snip out some coins even if we do speak about into those early years of BItcoin which we know that the value of that time is really that still low or cheap on which means that 50k bitcoins wouldnt really be worth as much of today
and he never expect that thing to go boom. THe only thing that he had made out such mistake is on dealing with CEX. How this person wasnt really that able to think off about the possibilities for him
to get tracked? Knowing that hackers address is already that being surveillanced once it is involved on huge hack on which it is normal that government would really be doing their best to get a hold
with those address that is involved on such crime. Dont know if he's really just that careless or really just that dumb. Well, im not really that going in line with exploit or stealing something but
we cant really be able to deny that news like this would really be that always remain as part of the history and cant really be that easily forgotten.

Wow, this is very useful especially for us future key solvers, we will make sure not to make the same mistake.🤣
Good points, soo no hardware wallet, no cash, no CEX.

---

Jokes aside 😏, he didn't steal from people, correct? He essentially stole from criminals, so he is a master thief.
Stealing will never end well, we have seen it over and over, but people never learn, why?

It is hard to cover your tracks if you gained so much bitcoin illegally. That's a lot of money and what are the points of taking it into your custody if you can not use it or spend it as you want? Now he will spend part of his life in prison. Similar things happen with all the hackers who stole lots of money from various defi protocol which destroyed many lives. What a waste of money by a single rouge person!

Wrongdoings are wrongdoings, regardless of the fact that the Bitcoins were stolen from another illegal entity. Probably that's the reason he only got one year of imprisonment for stealing close to 3 billion dollars.

I really hope all hackers get their part of karma for stealing money. They are real threats to the society and with the advancement of internet, it has become even more lethal. Justice has to be served, today or tomorrow.

It caught my attention that there are dogs trained to sniff out computer hardware!

BTW, if someone wants to watch the vid:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Nq3ye-QCyM

To be fair he does look like not a horrible human being. Surely stealing 51k worth of bitcoin is a terrible thing to do, but at the time of doing it, it was probably closer to 50k more like, or at worst case maybe 500k? It wasn't 3+ billion at the time he stole, it was like that at its peak and I am sure that stealing anything under a million should be seen as "let's see what the story is". I am not saying he is a good guy, don't get me wrong, but crypto made me so used to seeing people stealing crypto that I have seen people stealing more than 500k multiple times a year for the past 10 years, and that means this guy just did it earlier than most, but didn't do anything new to me.

Just the other day Stake got hacked for 40 million, that is about 40 times more than this guy did, maybe 80 times, and when you think about it that way, it doesn't really feel like he has to be a bad guy, plus he helped with bitcoin so I would say that's a good plus for him as well.

Of course, he's been using mixers to conceal his identity, but I don't know why he made such a huge mistake. This time around he didn't use a mixer, he sent $800 to an exchange where he had already done KYC. Unknown to him the address of the stolen Bitcoin has been under surveillance for years. So through the transaction to the exchange, the feds were able to know his identity.

Prior to this mistake, there's a time he had a burglary attack at his home. He called 911 and the police came and took details of what happened.

So when the feds have gotten his identity, they paid him a visit, pretending that it was a follow up to his burglary case. He didn't know they had body cams and were surveiling the house. After they've gotten all they wanted, they left and came back, this time around with a search team, a search warrant and sniffing dogs.

You left out a lot of important details.

First he reported to the Feds when his house was robbed - there was a suitcase full of cash in there that was stolen.
That was a big mistake because that was when he first started getting monitored closely.

Then the KYC exchange thing, like you said.

A couple months later, he made his infamous mistake of putting clean coins and dirty coins in the same transaction. It wasn't long after that before he was busted.


Some documentary I watched said he only got the suitcase full of cash because it's "like they do in the movies". This is a very good example of why you should also not mess with too much hard cash 

I did not actually watch the video to understand the part where he used mixers. I just checked and found that CoinJoin was launched in 2011 which is a year before the incidence. Probably he used mixers partly and not fully else he wouldn't have been noticed from the deposit alone.


Was this mixed coins that he deposited in the exchange? If yes, does it mean the mixer failed to do the job? If he actually used mixers, how could he be careless to deposit unmixed coins to the exchange?


It is possible he ran out of luck so I agree with you. There is always an end to whatever that is not genuine.

The man, Jimmy Zhong, hid himself very well many years but with time, he believed he was already safe and began to make mistakes.

He left traces after he generously gave away bitcoin but he did not realize that his bitcoin distributions are good traces for governmental agencies to trace him. Eventually he was caught with Bitcoin backup stored in a popcorn tin.

U.S. Attorney Announces Historic $3.36 Billion Cryptocurrency Seizure And Conviction In Connection With Silk Road Dark Web Fraud

You are wrong brother, please watch the video to understand the whole story better. There were mixers back then, in-fact, the video, it was said or stated that Jimmy used mixing services to transfer and sell most parts of the stolen bitcoin.
What i didn't mention in the OP but was said in the video was that Jimmy's trouble began when about $400,000 dollars was stolen from a safe in his house, he called 911 who then sent police officers to his house to investigate the crime, along the line, he also made the mistake of sending $800 worth of bitcoins to an exchange where KYC is mandatory.

I personally think all this happened because his cup was full, and like we all know, something must kill a man once the man's cup is full.

Change of path can happen in both ways, that is both opposite directions. this is to say that, a person's path can change, or a person can change his or her path in the negative of positive directions, there is nothing hard here to be confused about.

I think they hold auctions that has these items, iirc the FBI have done this before with other bitcoin seized from other cybercriminals. Maybe they still have the bitcoin or the wallet that contains the bitcoins but it's unlikely of them to keep it long, if they did have an auction for this, the winner of that auction would be one lucky man/woman. Or if we want to go all conspiracy theorist, the people that knows have long ago split the bitcoins to themselves.

He would have remained anonymous should there had been mixers then. Maybe these were the motivation for the invention of mixing technology.  I'm not justifying his action or defending him but I feel mixers are actually in line with the very reason for the creation of Bitcoin unlike CEX that make KYC compulsory.

"Changed his path" .... ""biggest Bitcoin thieves", why I'm I confused by this statement? I was thinking that changing his path means turning a new leaf and never want to have any connection to stealing.

Maybe the government has sold all its bitcoins or distributed them to each other because that is a very large amount of bitcoins. But we don't know the truth.

Usually guys like with that surname are Asian and on his case a half-half nationality which is common, and his image can be searched on Google. Jimmy or also have a real name of James is like the guy who likes to party and that made his lifestyle to be living at the fullest because he's got a lot of money. This is a good topic to discuss because it seems that news publishers have posted his story again a few days ago so it's timely.

• The secret life of Jimmy Zhong, who stole – and lost – more than $3 billion
• Guy Who Stole Billions in Bitcoin Lived a Sad Life

I thought that all the Bitcoin seized by the United States government was from Silk Road back and not from hackers who stole it from them.
The prison term is not long. Cases like this are sentenced to imprisonment for dozens of years, but it appears that the amount was not much at the time of the trial and it appears that the accusation was of tax evasion.
It is strange how a person like this could make the beginner's mistake of sending $600 to the KYC process account with the personal address attached.
The report did not mention whether these bitcoins were sold.

he is asian. the screenshot above is not jimmy.. jimmy in the screenshot is hiding under a black jacket. the guy in blue is someone else

Well, I am just your type of person who is always very careful with what I click-on, on the internet, but I can assure you that the link containing the video is very safe bud, it is actually a video hosted by CNBC, i believe you know CNBC, it's one of the most reputable news outlets, i believe they also own Television channel too. So there is absolutely nothing to be afraid of checking out the video, whether you are on mobile or computer doesn't matter, except you don't have enough data, then that's a different case.

By the way, here is the raw link to the video, so you know its as clean as it can be, there is nothing to download, just click the play button on the video to watch(stream) it. https://www.cnbc.com/video/2023/10/17/the-secret-life-of-jimmy-zhong-who-stole-and-lost-more-than-3-billion.html

Hilarious that this notorious scammer made a small mistake by submitting KYC for small amount while he can use Mixer and DEX P2P to convert his Bitcoin without the need to undergo KYC. Also he can buy verified exchange account to cash out his money since there’s a lot of user selling this kind of account.

He makes US government increase their Bitcoin stash. I remember reading this news last year IIRC and I’m amazed on how US cyber security department watch this guy wallet address for a long time until he make a small mistake.

It was seized. All of it apparently. He couldn't hold any of his stolen bitcoin even if he wanted to, and I can only imagine him getting tracked by the FBI and other government agencies to make sure he's not dabbling in the world of crypto again so he couldn't penetrate the space once again. What you should be curious about is how the government gained jurisdiction over him given the fact that Silk Road's not even based in the US if I'm not mistaken. I was expecting interpol to cook his ass but no, it's the US government that took him in. Also a little more tame in the punishment compared to other people who committed similar crimes but got more prison time. Kind of makes me wonder what he did behind the scenes to get to this.

The question is are they still holding that volume of bitcoin he stole then till now or they have sold it? Because if they are holding till date I believe that will worth something very large, but if they sold out when it was nothing then I can see this story not to be attractive because people will be glad to hear how they managed to secure it till date. I would have clicked on the video to watch but I don't like clicking on everything I come across here with my mobile rather pc will be more better, just that I am only being mindful with the kind of links I clicked here.

I thought this guy was Chinese, given his last name is Zhong. But his action was careless because  one wrong move, and that $3 billion, at the current price, ends up in the possession of the US government. He probably wasn't fully aware of the potential consequences of his actions at the time because he made a move that could trace his wallet for an $800 withdrawal only. I'm not sure if what they found as evidence against him is entirely accurate because based on his actions, he seems like just a regular guy who, due to a lack of knowledge about the law, made a mistake.

But the good news is that he was sentenced to "one year and one day in federal prison." He's probably regretting it big time, especially watching how Bitcoin has grown since. This article coming out during the bull run must be haunting him even more.

  Here is a story of a man named Jimmy Zhong, who is said to have stolen over 51,680 Bitcoin from the illegal darknet market, Silk Road back in 2012.

In 2012, Jimmy Zhong discovered a bug on Silk Road exchange that caused him to withdraw more funds than he originally deposited or had in his account.

Over the years, the value of those stolen Bitcoins skyrocketed to more than $3 billion. However, he made a small mistake and transferred approximately $800 in funds to a cryptocurrency exchange which then asked him to go through a KYC process that required the account holder's real name and address, Jimmy did and this was how his downfall began.

Along with other evidence, three IRS agents began formulating a plan to approach Jimmy. Eventually, they obtained a search warrant for Jimmy's home, and sniffer dogs found a safe buried in concrete beneath the basement slabs containing precious metals, stacks of cash, physical bitcoins minted in the early days of the cryptocurrency and a safe with password wallet containing Bitcoins form during the Silk Road hack of 2012. Jimmy ultimately faced charges of wire fraud and, after pleading guilty, was sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison. Additionally, the stolen assets were seized by the United States government.

Jimmy turned out to be one of the first OG players in the Bitcoin community, contributing to the original Bitcoin code and providing early developers with ideas on key topics, such as how to reduce the size of the blockchain. Eventually, he changed his path and became one of the biggest Bitcoin thieves of all time.

Watch the 33 minutes video below, it contains very vital information which i believe we all can learn something from, it's very well documented, straight to the point and very informative, and also teaches is how important privacy is and can be for all of us.



Reference - BinanceFeed.