Feds Score $3B Crypto Seizure

Take Down of Ulbricht, Zhong

Customers of Silk Road, which was shut down by U.S. agents in 2013, used Bitcoin to openly traffic drugs, wash dirty money and purchase hacking tools. Ulbricht was convicted in 2015 of seven criminal counts and is serving life in prison.

The sting to take down Ulbricht and his cyber-bazaar was seen as a major win for law enforcement at a time when it was just beginning to grapple with the convergence of cryptocurrency and crime.

While the U.S. seized 175,000 Bitcoins from Ulbricht’s Silk Road, prosecutors suspected tens of thousands of digital coins that the site commissioned were still missing. They scored a win in 2020 with a billion-dollar seizure of 69,000 Bitcoins from a hacker who had stolen from Silk Road before Ulbricht’s arrest.

Court records show Zhong studied computer science at the University of Georgia before starting a real estate business, RE&D Investments, with Memphis developer Clayton Kemker in 2019.

In an interview, Kemker said that Zhong told him he’d amassed his Bitcoin fortune through “ground-floor mining” just as the digital currency began to take off.

“This is definitely a surprise to me because I thought he just was one of the Bitcoin guys who got in early and got lucky,” Kemker said by phone. He said that Zhong owned 80% of their business while Kemker, who held the remaining share, provided sweat equity.

Construction was underway on one of their developments when Zhong called Kemker last year to tell him law enforcement had raided his home. “He said they seized all of his crypto so he was insolvent and at the time he was covering the operating costs months to month,” Kemker said. “He just kept saying ‘I can’t talk about it.’”

Kemker said he offered to buy Zhong out of the business twice in the past year in a bid to keep the projects going, but that his attorneys wouldn’t agree because they didn’t know how the case would play out in court.

In September, a group of creditors, including building contractors and Kemker’s father, a construction consultant, filed involuntary bankruptcy proceedings against RE&D Investments in federal court, claiming the company owed them $1.8 million for unpaid work.

As part of Zhong’s plea agreement for the Silk Road fraud, he signed over his 80% stake in the company to the government. Prosecutors also seized $661,900 in cash and 25 Casascius coins worth 174 Bitcoin, according to the forfeiture order. Zhong was released on $310,000 bond on Friday.

The case is USA v. James Zhong, 22-cr-00606, US District Court, Southern District of New York (Manhattan).

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