The Jimmy Zhong / Silk Road Theft (Nov 2021): During a physical raid on Jimmy Zhong’s home in Georgia, IRS-CI agents found a computer hidden in a popcorn tin in a floor closet. They seized 50,676 BTC (then worth $3.36 billion) that Zhong had stolen from the Silk Road marketplace a decade prior.
Discussion
The Ross Ulbricht / Silk Road Case (2013 & 2020): The FBI seized 144,000 BTC directly from the Silk Road servers and Ulbricht's laptop following his arrest in a San Francisco library.
2020: The DOJ seized an additional 69,370 BTC from "Individual X," a hacker who had moved the funds from the Silk Road years earlier and agreed to forfeit them to the government.
The Minnesota Cabin Heist (USA, Sept 2025): Two brothers held a family at gunpoint for nine hours. They forced the father to drive three hours to a remote cabin to retrieve a hardware wallet, eventually stealing $8 million in crypto.
The B.C. Hostage-Taking (Canada, Nov 2025): A British Columbia investor and his family were held overnight by masked intruders. The victim was waterboarded and beaten until he transferred $2 million in Bitcoin. The attackers reportedly found him due to his online posts about crypto success.