The mists who have wrapped the mysterious bitcoin transfer worth over $ 1 billion from a dormant wallet since 2015 seem to be unraveled: the operation was carried out by the US Department of Justice , in context of a really intricate story that stars Silk Road, its founder Ross Ulbricht and a mysterious “individual X” .

Small step back to contextualize the story for those who are not aware of the past. Silk Road has been a black market for all kinds of illicit services, activities and material accessible on the Dark Web seized and closed permanently in 2013, with the arrest of Ulbricht and a subsequent sentence of two life sentences and 40 years of imprisonment for seven counts, including drug trafficking and money laundering.

Thousands of criminals operated on Silk Road and circulated beyond 100 thousand buyers, according to US surveys which also determined a turnover of over 9.5 million bitcoins and for which Silk Road has forfeited over 600 thousand bitcoins of commissions .

$ 1 billion in bitcoin confiscated by the US Department of Justice

“Silk Road was the most famous online crime market of its time. The success of the trial against the founder of Silk Road in 2015 left a billion-dollar question open. Where did the money go? Today’s forfeiture complaint at least partially answers this open question. 1 billion dollars of these criminal proceeds are now in the possession of the United States “said US Attorney David Anderson, announcing a complaint filed in recent days for the seizure of funds.

The complaint explains that during this year the agents of the Internal Revenue Service have collaborated with Chainalysis, a company specializing in analysis and investigation operations on the blockchain, in order to analyze the bitcoin transactions conducted by Silk Road, managing to identify 54 previously undetected transactions and representing a theft conducted between 2012 and the 2013 by the mysterious “individual X” against Silk Road.

Who is individual X?

Overall these 54 transactions transferred 70411, 46 bitcoin to two wallets, which we will call “A” and “B” : at that time, it was on 2013, the value of the loot was approximately 354 thousand dollars. In April of the same year, the two wallets A and B sent 69471, 082201 to a third wallet “C”, which is the one that has been dormant since 2015, year in which 101 bitcoins were transferred to the BTC-e trading service, which was subsequently closed and seized in 2017.

At the time of the incident Ulbricht was able to trace the identity of this mysterious individual, threatening him to return what was stolen. But individual X never returned or even spent that fortune, and on Tuesday he signed a confiscation agreement with the US Attorney’s Office, thereby agreeing to turn over the funds to the government.