The U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of New York, Damian Williams, announced that authorities seized over 50,676 Bitcoins in connection with darknet market Silk Road in November 2021.

At the time of seizure, the coins were worth $3.36 billion, but as of 9:06 pm ET Monday, they were worth about $1.045 billion due to the plunge in the price of BTC over the past few months.

In November 2021, this seizure was the biggest in the crypto space. However, it was dethroned in February 2022 when the Department of Justice (DoJ) seized over 70,000 Bitcoins from the Bitfinex hack in 2016.

Along with Williams, Tyler Hatcher, the special agent in charge of criminal investigation at the Internal Revenue Service, confirmed that James Zhong of Gainesville, Georgia, pled guilty to committing wire fraud in September 2012. He had obtained over 50,000 Bitcoins from the darknet.

Zhong confessed his charges on Nov. 4 before US District Judge Paul G. Gardephe and now faces up to 20 years in jail, which is the maximum sentence for wire fraud.

"This seizure was then the largest cryptocurrency seizure in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice and today remains the Department's second largest financial seizure ever," noted the announcement.

Additionally, law enforcement seized approximately $661,900 in cash and precious metals from the premises of Zhong after they acquired a search warrant on Nov. 9, 2021.

"For almost ten years, the whereabouts of this massive chunk of missing Bitcoin had ballooned into an over $3.3 billion mystery. Thanks to state-of-the-art cryptocurrency tracing and good old-fashioned police work, law enforcement located and recovered this impressive cache of crime proceeds. This case shows that we won't stop following the money, no matter how expertly hidden, even to a circuit board in the bottom of a popcorn tin," said Williams.

The DOJ logo is pictured on a wall after a news conference in New York
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