Early this morning, the address marked as Silk Road DOJ Confiscated Funds by Arkham transferred 29,800 BTC to two new addresses, bc1qla and bc1qng.
Through on-chain tracing, we can see that the total number of confiscated BTC is 49,800, which was transferred from the address of the suspect JAMES ZHONG to the US government's special case custody address on March 25, 2022.
The website of the U.S. Department of Justice shows that the BTC confiscated by the U.S. Department of Justice originated from a wire fraud case in September 2012. According to the description of the U.S. prosecutor, James Zhong stole 50,000 bitcoins from Silk Road through wire fraud. In the next 10 years, he managed to conceal his actions and the source of his wealth. Zhong used decentralized bitcoin mixers, overseas cryptocurrency exchanges, and an impressive array of technical tools to thwart tracking efforts. But thanks to the law enforcement agencies’ unremitting and skilled efforts in tracking funds, the federal government discovered Zhong’s conspiracy and eventually obtained the confiscation of more than 51,680 bitcoins.
On February 7 and March 14, 2023, the U.S. District Court issued a final forfeiture order for the property seized in the James ZHONG case. On the chain, it can be seen that the BTC confiscated on March 25, 2022 was transferred to the U.S. Department of Justice's case address.
Historical sales record: 9825 BTC was deposited into coinbase on March 7, 2023.
On July 12, 2023, 8200 BTC was deposited into Coinbase.
On April 2, 2024, 1999 BTC was deposited into Coinbase Prime.
The remaining 29,799 BTC were transferred from the address bc1qje controlled by the US government to two new addresses early this morning.
