Silk Road hacker who stole over 50,000 BTC pleads guilty and is sentenced to one year and one day in prison.

According to BlockBeats news on April 15th, 32-year-old James Zhong from Gainesville, Georgia was accused of using nine accounts to create fast transactions to cheat the withdrawal processing system of an illegal market and steal over 50,000 bitcoins from Silk Road, a market operated by Ross Ulbricht. Zhong pleaded guilty to a wire fraud charge and was sentenced to one year and one day in prison. (The illegally obtained bitcoins have been confiscated by the authorities). The bitcoin theft in this case occurred between 2011 and 2013 when the price of bitcoin was much lower than it is today. At the end of 2013, the price of a single bitcoin was less than $800, far below its current market price of about $30,000. Authorities raided Zhong's home on November 9th, 2021, when the price of bitcoin was approaching its all-time high of $69,000. The total value of these bitcoins, which were confiscated by federal authorities (including the initial seizure and two voluntary confiscations after Zhong's arrest), has reached $3.4 billion. Even at the time of his sentencing, their value still exceeded $1.57 billion.