Jimmy Zhong- The Unbelievable Bitcoin Heist That Made Billions

12-05-23

Episode Transcription

Made by robots for robots. Only read if you’re werid.

You can start it. Hey, man, shoot dude, how'd you get there? Hey? This is a special episode of This is Last Night. It's the two hundredth episode, two episode. That's a power move. I planned this as soon as I saw the episode air. I was like, immediately, that is such a power move. So much. We do have a guest today. Yeah, there's another voice in your ears today. It's not just that that was your cue to say something, Hi, Hello, there's another voice of your ears today. I mean, I'm supposed to introduce myself. It's the one person. The one person here remembers if we confirmed that this is the sandwich guy, this is not the sandwich guy. If you thought this in the Sandwich Guy the whole time, we need your question. No, definitely did not. He stole three billion dollars a bitcoin. Things I learned last night was one of our investors. Ye. She was a long round, longtime listener, longtime investor. Yeah yeah, yeah, she blackmailed us into bringing her. I knew the most about you of everyone in the Patreon discord. That's actually I won the March Madness because I earned my way here. What she says, it's almost November. Yeah, we're just looking good. We're glad to making good and a promise we made four years ago. I'm saying, h yeah, you won the trivia thing, because you know you didn't. And I was very proud of myself because the only ones I got wrong were like YouTube the algorithm questions and I was like, I don't know which video did better. What questions you put in there? Yeah, they were pretty ones about your guys friendship, the ones about like how long you've known each other and all of that. I got all of those right. You put in which video? I wanted to make it hard. I think there were like two or three of those, and the only ones I got wrong, Wow, trying to make it challenging because we so for anybody who's knew what we did was we did Tilling Madness, which was March Madness. We did you know, best episodes, We did brackets and then you and who who did you have to face off for Lydia. That's why I made it, because somebody's killing. Lydia is married to a dude I grew up with, and so I was like, I was like, that's an unfair advantage. She got some of the questions wrong about you guys. Just guess some of those she knew the YouTube friend. I don't know, but I will say it was a good thing that, like the March Madness thing reset because we were another round in and I think some of the guesses if we had gone with the original bracket, I may not have won, that's true. Yeah, I don't remember who won, but I think because Timothy Dexter is still like my favorite episode. It was the live show and so yeah, because we mentioned you in it, No, I want you to know that was my roommate. She was the one snort laughing. I mean I ended up snort laughing after if we got you after No, I just know because I tell people that all the time. I'm like, the guy had just picked randomly. He was like, oh, let's put cats on a ship and they ended up having a giant rat problem, like just and then he made a statue of himself and I love that guy. That was a good episode. Yeah, that was And speaking of good episodes, we've got a good one here today. This is a two hundredth episode celebration. It's a it's a bonanza. Our phones are live. Feel free to call in at any time. Yeah, we're giving money to the Children's Medical Hospital. If you want to dial in and give us a donation, Wor'll be up all night. It's a telethonon event. So this episode doesn't come out for so we got to keep going until it comes out. I don't know if you knew that was the plan. And we're not catering. So me and Tim have the table. There's three of us. At least there's three of us. We can sleep in shifts. Yeah, it's true. That's actually a really good idea. First anyways, have you either of you ever heard of Jimmy Jeong? Yeah? No, please say that again though, Jimmy Sean, Okay, Jimmy Jimmy Jean, Jimmy Jean, Jimmy Jean. He's pronouncing it friends. Yeah, yeah, well, I mean it's the sandwich place. It's yeah, they do after free smells smells. Well, that's it's a side effect of it being so fast, like because they're on the move. Jimmy stupid, I like it. Who's Jimmy. Jimmy Jong is a significant person. He recently was arrested for one of the highest value bitcoin heists ever heististed. Yeah, how do you how do you heist. It's like a digital wallet and you steal out of the digital wallet. How did you do? Like? How is that a heist? Though? Well, you go into still stealing even though bitcoin doesn't exist. Now you go into a bank and you wear a clown mask and you say everybody get on the ground, and then you say, who here has bitcoins? I'm thinking, like you got to like find somebody who's got a bitcoin wallet, hole my gun points and give me your password, Like that's gotta be They can't be hacked. I mean, I mean they can. Is that a heist or is that a hack? No? No, I feel like if you're threatening somebody to give you all your money, isn't that uh hm No, it's a theft either way. Theft is the term the actual, but I mean in hest sounds like a cool bar, I think. I think what makes a theft a heist is a plan, Like it's a well thought out plan, which in retrospect, I don't know if this guy had that, so this might have just been a theft. He's in jail, So maybe it's the value that makes it a heist, because three billion dollars that's pretty hard. That's like state I hate you for that. Okay, let's tell the story. Jimmy Joan Jimmy Jong grew up in Massachusetts. I believe that's not confirmed. Part of the story where he's from isn't super important. Let's checkipedia. QUI don't worry about Okay whatever. Yeah, so grew up in Massachusetts was kind of a have you ever thought about never mind? Yeah, he was just kind of a I want to know if I've thought about that thing? Oh, yeah, I have, no, I mean, you just never thought about Like I saw this online the other day and I was I've been thinking about it a lot lately. The Roman Empire close how well, Like if you were a time traveler, you time traveled back to say the eighties, you got the neighborhood bully and sent them to high school today. Do you think they'd be a successful bully today? Like could they bully today? You're saying, they're asking if the insults would translate to get the bully? Yeah, you travel time with them, Okay, in school and what do you tell you? Go, Hey, you're going to bully here, Let's see you bully And they go around leather jacket and they're just like freaking shoving people in the lockers. Is that what you're saying? Yeah, and you want to know if that was still no, No, no, because the bullies are more submersive now. They don't call you a nerd, they call you a fascist. They don't you know what I'm saying, Like, they're not like that's what I'm saying. Is that fair? I mean, I don't think I think gen Z is borderlining previous to bullies, cyber bullies. No, because someone's like someone will go, uh, you need to check your insecurities than the bully is that they go, wow, that's really well, then turn into a gen Z. They would just adapt that. How adaptable do we think bullies are? Though, because I feel like eighties bullies are the same person today. Yeah. I just started watching A Stranger Things for the first time and uh wow, yeah that that was like a wake up call to how bad the eighties were. And then I was like, oh that that generation of kids because they were just allowed to ride on bikes and fight monsters and their parents do another like you know, of course talking about I've only seen one episode, so spoil anything, but I'm talking about like, don't spoil for almost a decade. What do you mean, don't spoil I is a surprise. You're in for a twist, okay, because like I was watching a cute story and then the happens unthinkable. Oh god, have you seen the gen Z video of Titanic where everybody gets upset that the old lady from the movie isn't a wasn't a real person on the Titanic? Yeah? What is this? I thought this was real? And this is what I'm saying. Maybe that bully would do well because like he has a lot of there's a lot of stuff to bully the kids for. But are you saying would people react this? Yeah? I think I think what you said is be like, like, we'll take your security. Like I feel like they would respond. Was something too intellectual for them? Yeah, I don't know. I think kids are just different. It turned to violence after that. Yeah, he's probably beat him up, right, Yeah, he probably Yeah, he's probably still tough for them. Anyway, Why were you thinking about this? I just think about bullies when I'm burying these bees in my backyard by uh No, Okay, so Jimmy. The reason I brought that up is Jimmy was bullied as a kid didn't have a lot of friends. It was kind of a bit of a loner and also had like kind of a negative family life, Like wasn't well. I guess like if that that bully shows up the school and says something like you're a nerd and someone will go, hey man, the eighties called going your insults back? He's like, did they call back? Do you know how to get back? That would suck to be time traveled? And then because you didn't, you didn't saying to be time traveled and then throw them back into a high school. I'd be he's still in high school at the time that you Yeah, he is, it's just a different high school. Yeah, in a different time. I think bullies still exist. Yeah we should. We should do that. Isn't that Back to the Future, doesn't Biff at some point go to a different time and he is still a bully? That's true. Yeah, he's just old maybe like a mortal combat some bullies, you know what I'm saying, who had the tougher bullies and eighties of the twenties growing up by a time traveled bully. Yeah, he's getting bullied by the time traveler and it was so bad that his parents got a divorce. Dude, can you believe with that what he did to that kid last week? He put him in a trash can, he stuffs him in a locker, and then he made his parents when he sit down with his mom, he know, Sandra, are you really sure that you made the right decision? You're planting seeds of doubt. What do you mean his parents got divorced because of how bad he was bullied? Or were the parents like, dude, our kids such a did you just cry every day? I can take I can't see you anymore. I can't. He's such a for it. I feel bad for this kid already. Yeah, so the parents got divorced for different reasons. Okay, it might have been the bully. I don't know. We don't have any documentation on that. So it's not not the bully. We don't know. He wasn't a time traveler. We can't prove that. We can't. We can't prove any of this. Okay, So, uh, he had a negative upbringing and he but he was a kid who, like a lot of kids who were bullied. This is the nineties. I keep saying eighties because I feel like eighties bullies are like prolific. But that was the high era of bo Yeah, nineties bullies took you to a whole new level. You know, yeah, I know. Uh And do you know where I was going with that? You were going? I think so nineties bullies were the worst. So he was bullied in the nineties, and like a lot of kids who got bullied, he threw himself into his computer and started learning a lot about coding and sure all this type of stuff. Tat himself a bunch of different languages. Are bully now ended up listening to weird podcasts. That's true. Welcome as a kid of the nineties. We have we confirmed that this is the Sandwich guy. This is not the guy. If you thought this is the Savori guy the whole time, we were not the sand your question. He definitely did not know. He stole three billion dollars a bitcoin, and I forgot about the Big Italian is actually named after his high school pull. Oh yeah, that's big a town. I forgot we talked about the bitcoin eyes. I haven't. I've had d calf coffee today. I have had zero call. Oh no, we come to this caffeine A Jimmy John was bullied though he was, Yeah, you don't. You don't do that without getting bullied. Sandwich. Yeah, let me tell you about fred de Luca from Subway Man bullied. We're never gonna have a good at least he was when I worked there, bullying the CEO. I call him every day and I go, hey, listen, I just made up this new sandwich. Good morning, say with boy, Hey bred boy, all I just got them breath all these meats. You're such a loser. I called your mom last night. She said, she's now. I love the idea of believe he's going. That's cool. Family. Oh dude, just shove me the walk, leave my parents out of this. Just give me a swirly please, please give me instead. All Right, you see what Tim start, You see why we're here, right, It's all right? So yeah, so Jimmy, do you want to finish that? You can have the rest of it. No, I don't. I would never come between Tim and his all right, thank you. He started coding. Yeah, so he started coding, and he got a scholarship. Uh, and he thought that that was going to change his life to Georgia. Okay, he thought that that was going to change his Massachusetts down of Georgia. Yeah, and he thought that he thought that that was going to change his relationship with his parents. He thought they were going to finally be proud of him for once, or they weren't in what year is this now, he's like two thousand and eight, Oh, pretty later. Yeah, And so he he goes to college Athens, Georgia. What university is there, Georgia State, University of Gegi. Yeah, it's the Bulldogs. But are they Georgia State or University of Georgia. University the Georgia, University of Georgia, the Dogs, it's the Dogs University of Georgia. Yeah. So he goes there and he studies computer science. Okay, and while he's there, this thing is happening in the Internet call bitcoin, but it's very early bitcoin. It's like two thousand and eight, right, and so he gets into it. He starts mining, and he's like, oh, this is neat. And so he contributed some of the code to really early bitcoin because it's open source at the time, and so he can contributed a little bit of code to that. Technically, technically speaking, was one of the founders a bitcoin because of that, not really, I mean founders a bitcoint are there. If that's technic, if that's like how the level of entry, Well, I don't think it was. Maybe founders too strong of a term, but technically helped create that founding, contributing member, founding contributing donor fan. That's what you were to this show if you started listening so early? Yeah, yeah, when did you start your seventeen or eighteen eighteen? Did we start twenty seventeen? What's the first episode you listened to? I started in order you started it all. It was the first. We used to tell people to do that. We don't do that anymore. Yeah, we don't tell who to do that. Listen to the episode. Yeah, we say listen to what we got good at audio, get a bunch of it, which is still also after we hired Alex to it took him some time to get there's a there's a review. You realize if he leaves, then you know nothing to start over. I know that's true. You don't bully him, No, we bully him watch your family. No, but we have a review. There's a review out there where someone recently and like last year or so said something about our Springfield miss every episode and they were like, can you guys like stop laughing directly into the mics, and it's like, I mean we do eventually in like two years, so like we get, Yeah, we get that's what I'm saying. Yeah, you should just go reply to that now and be like okay, cool, we did it. By the way, we're gonna would reply to reviews. Yeah, well maybe we could create your own. Are you trying to tea up a thing right now? You got Abigail brought some reviews. Why do you say your name like that? Like what Abby? Gail? He does? Say it? Weird? Yeah? I knew it? How do you say it? A girl? Got it? How do you say it? I go by Abby mostly? But really we've always called you Abagai? Why do we do that? That's my name in the discord? So should we call you Abby? It doesn't matter? All right, Abby Abby? Okay? She brought us. She brought us some reviews. Uh yeah, reviews about show? Yeah, I brought them. So you know what, here's what I hate about comments and reviews and this we talked about it in an earlier episode. Tim's just like, yeah, dude, let's have brush off me and like, yeah, because the mean stuff is about me, dude. They don't say mean stuff about you. No, not a single review is like that. The discord is for Yeah, that's what they say, some mean things about me and make them pay to do it. That's why we tim Yeah, all you want, it's worth it, all right. His parents are rock solid, though there's nothing that's going to tear them apart. All right, read these reviews, all right? Five stars. Hello. Name is Caleb. I'm thirteen years old, and I love this show so much, so funny all the time. I have heard every single episode and they're also good used the wrong there. I heard about this podcast from my friend Kale and said we would love a shout out. Oh hey from Caleb the ax a lottle Caleb and your friend Kale. I don't know that's spelled weird Kale. L is Kille your friend or is that just you without the B? That's exactly what Kale, Caleb the before the L, not after the L. Kale, shout out to both of you or one of you. I don't know, I don't know. I review Yeah, come on, Kale. I mean, if he's thirteen, maybe he doesn't have maybe his computer access. He's got a computer he's got a computer. He can access to a computer. Five stars annoying. They are kind of annoying, but I like them. Sleep again. At least we got five stars annoying. I mean, okay, as a as a long time listener, I know what I'm getting into. A long time listener, first time sitter, I'm on the high ground. Okay, No, you guys, get off to That's why we spent the first like five minutes of the episode. I forgot that he told us that it was a it was a commuter, Jimmy Johnson. I forgot how we got from sandwiches. All right, give us another one. Five stars impressing future in laws. Best part of my Tuesday is listening to these guys. It's the perfect blend of laughing and stupid jokes and feeling a little bit smarter after an episode. My future brother in law loves niche, and thanks to this podcast, I knew exactly what the Great Emu War was when it came up in conversation. I'm not saying this podcast is the reason my in laws accept me, but I'm saying there's a chance Tim and Jaron, you guys want beef or chicken at my wedding chicken. Heck, yeah, neither. Actually, I'm on the kind of a specific diet. I would love salmon and wild rice to the wedding. This is not gonna work for me. Yeah. Actually, a time traveler, I'm a huge bully of your future, kid, and I'm here to stop this right now. Come back into the future to be like, hey, guess what your parents never buried loser? Yeah, and the kids like because it doesn't exists. Fading grades. Yeah, yeah, that's a new SWIRLI all right, what do we got? Three stars? Stop you right there? All right? Three stars? Three stars. Here's the thing. I don't like the three star reviews because they usually have a genuine critique. This is the longest one yet. Well, here's the thing. Five star is like, we like them one stars. Wait till you hear the critique. Wish they would decrease the amount of laughing. Stop why'd you do that? Right away? I can't do it. He's incapable. This is when you take his drink away from him. Alright, let's just clinch your jaw like this like that. Great hosts and concept. I really enjoyed the info they had and think the hosts are some of the funniest When trying to listen, the laughing literally overwhelms and is so close to the microphones. I ended. I ended the episode I listened to with a headache. Unfortunately, they didn't stay close to the topic and just annoyed me. I only listen to the Springfield, Missouri episode to be honest, and I'm not sure when I will attempt another listening session. I hope it's not this one. I am keeping my fingers crossed at the hosts are slightly further from Mike's and not laughing more than talking. In my next listen, Honestly, I might time laughter versus talking. I think I think timing. If someone wants to time, no, the length of our laughs versus the length of actual conversation. I would love to see the statistics. Daniel did make a yeah, tilling, but but only the information off topic. Yeah, so he takes out all the banter and all the stuff and just as the series's so so short, Yeah that's all right. Yeah, we got more reviews, a few more stars, laugh track or bust really wanted to like it? So what is it? I was last I would love this show with the last track. I don't know, but how do I still give you three stars? Well? They were like I wanted to like it. Yeah, it's fine, one star, terrible. The commentary is silly and the research is superficial. If you are an academic and like to research, I doubt you would enjoy this useless. No you, I would. I doubt you would enjoy this unless you like frat boy reflections. Frat boy, Yeah, you and me the two frattiest guys I know. If you're an academic, that means conspiracy theorists. The person who wrote that listen the one Alien episode was like, this is clearly not for us. Their name is kimber Dancer. Yeah, for sure. They're from One More Star, it says us. And there is it down a little bit fine? One another one star. Yep, hey, dummies, do some research. You're sounded like idiots on the Frank ab Gale felt that you didn't spell it right. Soho. Basically everything he's done has been proven false. A simple Google search would show that isn't that the did he not finished the episode? A simple couple more minutes would have got you there. See. I wish they would explain that on the movie, though, there's no retrospect. At the end, they would say, you know, these things are alleged, and the only person who said he's done these is him because I didn't know that until I listened to the I was a great twist. Yeah, I think I think I did a good job storytelling that episode. Sure it was that. And then I wish they would have said, Hey, that lady is not real. By the way, Hey the boat didn't seek. Yeah, we made the whole thing up, made it up. But still go to the museum. Yeah. So he graduates college and he starts a sandwich restaurant. Uh no, so he uh he got into bitcoin in the early years of bitcoin, right uh and did some mining, did some coding for it. But it was kind of like a at that time, bitcoin was useless, like it was actually it was point zero zero zero zero one CeNSE or what what's the It was as valuable as like money and RuneScape or Club Penguin like it was not It was like a like a like a sight though. Yeah, sixty dollars to one million coins in RuneScape right now, I looked it up literally two days ago. Uh, it's well whatever, and so like yeah, I mean, I hope my high school bully here, you watch my parents are funds. You didn't pull it off. So yeah, there's got to be like a real what is that, you know, sixty cents to a million, that's like, yeah, I mean it was it was. I guess technically you could trade it in for some money, but it was pretty it's made up. Pretty not valuable. Yeah, it's still made up. It's just worth more to people. I mean, the same is true with real money. Yeah, it's just there's you know, a physical Well that's what I think about. Like I thought about like in uh in I don't want to even give a specific country, but in in like third world countries where like they're literally like two hundred thousand dollars, yeah, is nothing. Yeah right, just reset it. Yeah, you know what I'm saying, Like just zero, right, it's our dollars. Yeah, because we made ourselves. We made ourselves the global exchange currency. So now it's everything has to be able to exchange. Really, we're not even and we say we'll only give you one dollar. We're not even on the gold standard anymore. Right, so even the dollars are just it's all imaginary. It's all because we're at the top of far down there, you'll have a panic. I mean you'll back out. I work in the in the finance world. Where do you work? I do accounting? Yeah, what's the address I work from I work from home. You already have what are your what are your account names? Passwords? No, it's B three three F time dollar time zero. You know all that. That's that's my passwords, your passwords. So you know, oh, gosh, I'm not gonna change like, oh I just bought that domain name. No. But like if you look at a stock though, like you know, Apple Stock, there's a real company that exists that you you know, Oh, the company is doing well, this is worth a bunch, whereas bitcoin is just like, oh, this group of people have decided to believe in it. So it's yeah, it's particularly they decided its value arbitrarily, I mean arbitrarily trarely the Barbetralia. I mean that does not surprised me. How much do you have? Do you own bitcoin? Technically? Yes, I don't know where it is though, it's under my mattress. You need to hop on the mog coin train right now. It's worth point zero, say mom coin, mog you know, like half man, half dog, I'm a mog. Oh interesting for the educator. Oh okay, yes I've heard of this, not the coin, the coin, but spaceballs. His name is Barf Manhattan. I'm my own best friend, So Jimmy John's he bought a lot of bitcoin, or didn't buy he mined a lot of bitcoin, kind of forgot about it for a little bit, went on with college and had a better experience in college than he had in high school because like, college is a little different than high school. You don't have bullies, and you're mostly adults now, and so like everyone's you know, I mean, you might not get along with everybody, but you're not getting shoved in lockers or people are forcing your parents to I was going to say, they're already divorced. You're already divorced. You can't. Yeah. So he uh, he's having a better experience in college, but marginally better, so kind of lonely, but he's not being bullied, so it's better. Still, no friends, not being bullied. Yeah, Okay. Towards the end of his college career, though, bitcoin starts to go on the rise, and he's like, oh, where is my bitcoin? So he starts trying to track that down. He can't track it down, so he says, instead of trying to find mine, trying to find going to take somebody else. Well, he starts mining again. He's still early enough where a year later it kind of popped off, and then next thing he knows, like he had mined a significant chunk of bitcoin that was now worth like seventy thousand dollars okay, and he was like, oh, this will make me popular and so okay, oh god having money or having bitcoin because others money. So this is legitimately earned bitcoin that he's mining, and so like he he sets up a rig that's capable of mining a lot of bitcoin. This is early bitcoin. There's not a lot of competition for this, and so he's able to get a lot of bitcoin from his mining efforts. And so he's starting to actually develop a pretty serious income from mining bitcoin. And so he starts throwing big parties and paying for everything, and people are coming and hanging out with him because he's the money guy, like you know, like you know those people who are just like, yes, you like me because I'm rich, know, yeah, I have a hot t You're inflatable. I was like, I was like rock my friends because Yeah, I got a hot momby waiting at home because I because the buddy, uh momby She's gonna think you're calling her some some combination of like mom and her rombie yikes uh and so okay. And so he's just kind of living the cycle where he's earning a lot of bitcoin and then blowing it all on these huge parties. And he's living the life like like when I say parties, like he is like renting limos and paying for everybody's drinks and going to the bar and buying drinks for everybody local high school theater productions. Yeah. Friends, And so he turns into a bit of a party amenal a ammal uh. And he develops a bit of an alcohol problem. Here's a photo from this series from these years of him uh clubs with alcohol, and his life quickly turns from him being a lonely guy to the kind of guy who has a lot of friends that he's paying to have. And eventually his group just gets larger and larger and larger. Of all these people who hanging out with him to do all the fun stuff to keep a fund. Yeah, and by the time he graduates college, he's literally chartering private jets and flying all of his friends out to La how much big ten thousand dollars budgets to go on rodeo drive and buy whatever they want, and so like he is like living a high life, party lifestyle, paying for a bunch of friendships basically. And during this season of his life, he gets into a lot of party paraphernalia or drugs. Drugs is probably a better term for that, drugs. And so one of his favorites was was cocaine. And so he starts doing a lot of like a lot of cocaine, and one night he was out of Jimmy John's. I think he literally was out of Jimmy John's. Everything is connected. I feel better about myself. Now. He's talking to this group of girls telling them, Hey, I have thirty thousand dollars worth of cocaine at my place if you guys want to come over. The table behind him is an off duty police officer. Nice, So he texts his buddy who's on duty, Hey, hey, hang out, try to hang out with this guy real quick. Yeah, And so they show up and lo and behold, he did have someone in his possessions. So he catches a felony for that doesn't go to jail, but he does catch a felony. So he graduates college and he continues living this lifestyle. Sure, he buys a pretty modest home, like what's described as a bungalow. It's like a two bedroom to bath like one story house. Does buy himself a nice BMW and he lives there for a couple of years and throwing huge parties, live in the line bath, huge parties. Yeah, all right, they don't have to party. He's not. He's flying to you know, private jets, going to Vegas, going to New York. Came for everybody at the bar, going to New kid it. You go to Vegas and then you fly in two times you can. Yeah, And he does this for years and it works out really okay. Trying to slip it, I was trying to he was a bitcoin just straight him up a little bit. We know what he spended it on. So, uh So he does this for years. He actually gets into kind of brokerage almost so people who want to invest in bitcoin, he goes and buys the bitcoin for that on behalf of them and then moves it for them. So he becomes like a bitcoin investor and he makes millions doing this legitimately? Is he paying his taxes? Yes, he's doing everything by the book. He's doing this legitimately, except we yeah, there is some of the some of that stuff that's illegal. But other than the other than the legal stuff, everything by the book, except for the things he's not doing by the Sure, you got that right, And so like you haven't broken a few laws. Every time people are like, let's do a let's do a get to know you, you know, has anybody ever done anything illegal? Immediately raise my hand. They look at me and I go jaywalking, and they're like that, But it's true, walk all the time? Did you get arrested for it? I had a roommate in college who went to school in like New Jersey, and the campus like police officers would hide in bushes and give kids tickets. Shut up for that's not a cop, it's the campus police. Whoever it was that New Jersey college campuses. I have parking tickets, like, I'm not gonna pay that. Arrest me, Oh great, okay. One of my favorite things when I was working at a church was the icebreakers, where you would do these ice you know, do like that. You're all in the circle and you do like the the never have I ever things, but you get like, you know what I'm talking about that game where you there's like one less chair, so the person in the middle has to be like, I've never eaten at Chipotle, and anybody who hasn't eaten Chapole has to stand up and go find their chair, and there's one person left. My favorite was one guy in the middle of this I've been arrested, and we look around and then one girl stands up. Switch now she's in the middle, and we were like, it's like you would not have expected. Do you want to explain or do you want to just keep playing the game. That's why when they ask have you ever done anything illegal? I always raise my hand because then people are like, no, you know, she killed somebody was kidding allegedly though allegedly she's not in jail anymore. So, yeah, she's in that video of that girl who's driving drunk and like killed two people, yes, but is like yeah, She's like, I gotta be at school in the morning. Where's my car? And they're like, you're not going to school tomorrow, and she's like, I gotta go to school tomorrow. Oh my god, I have an unpaid jaywalking ticket on campus. I gotta take care of ticket. Wasn't she in like high school? In college school? Geez? Real weird video. Anyway, so he's he's legitimately for years, he's doing things legitimately. He meets a guy in Memphis, Tennessee who wants to get into real estate development, have an idea for like a multi uh story apartment building in downtown, like a big, a big apartment complex, and so he agrees to fund that that venture for the student in Memphis. And they're both young guys. They're like playing for the popular city of Memphis. Yeah, they're both like twenty four. And Jimmy is like, yeah, thirty two million. I'll give you thirty two million for this. And so they start working on this project and it takes years for to kind of get off the ground, and finally when he's when he's twenty eight, like, they're making the moves and actually pulling it off. And so he's going and working on starting to actually pull some of the funds from the bitcoin to do this because he has a lot of money and bitcoin at this point from his mining and trading and stuff like that. But he's living off of a lot less than what he has sure, which is still a lot. As THEE must say, he probably had earned somewhere in like seventy million worth of bitcoin legitimately during these years, but he only was pulling out a couple hundred thousand at a time to go party and be a crazy kid. And he's twenty eight and twenty nineteen. I believe he was out on one of these venders, gone for like a week doing the party thing. Comes home to realize this house was broken into, and so he calls nine one one and he's like, hey, my house was robbed. I've been gone for like a week. And they're like, okay, what was stolen? He said, they didn't steal anything except for a briefcase in my house and they're like, okay, where was the briefcase And he said it was in the vents nice and here I had my briefcases. And they're like, that's interesting. What was in the briefcase? And he was like a USB drive with some personal information and four hundred thousand dollars cash and they were like, interesting, we should call the FBI. That's why you buy a two bedroom, two bath bungalows, so people don't know you're rich. Yeah, exactly into your vents and so well. But I mean if if someone steals a briefcase from the vents, like yeah, that's like that's like opening a storage unit and taking a bunch of snack cakes. Like you know, that's that's premeditating. You knew what was happening. Yeah, yeah, So he uh, he kind of freaks out after this and he's like, well, I can't stay here anymore. So he pulls out some extra cash from his big quin wallet and buys like a multimillion dollar house on Lake Lanier and he dies there. He's out on a boat and it sinks. Oh he half and yeah, broken half and then he floated on the side like there was a piece of wood for two people. But yeah, and it was freezing cold. He froze to death. Oh yeah, he could have swammed ashore. It was like thirteen actually happened to Yeah. He did move into a really big house on like Linear, got this crazy security system built, and actually, over the next couple of years was like a resource for the police. Whenever there was crimes, they would call him and he'd be like yeah, and he'd be like, let me think really hard. I think this person did it checked event he became a resource for Yeah, I got a feeling. Yeah I'll pay for that. Yeah that's well close. No, he just had a really good security system on his property, so they would use his cameras, uh to catch criminals in the area. I guess I don't know how many crew cameras they're like in the whole city people. How close are crimes being committed to his mansion? These are legitimate questions that I don't have a legitimate answer to, Okay, but all I know is him and the police developed a pretty close relationship. Meanwhile, the I R S is investigating him and he doesn't know this. They're because whenever he called the police was like, I'm missing four hundred thusand dollars. The I R S is like, why do you have four hundred thousand dollars cash? Because this guy doesn't is technically speaking unemployed, but he's making a lot of money, and so they're like, this is interesting. What's going on here? Is getting unemployment collecting that four hundred dollars a month? I mean, he's probably he's probably filed as an investor. Is probably how he's filed his taxes. Yeah, but he's They're like, they're like, this is an interesting thing to just have four hundred thousand dollars in a briefcase and you're sure. So they're investigating him and he has no idea. The local police hits a dead end on his case, and so he hires a private investigator to try to track down the person who stole the money from him. So he's working with this private investigator in the local sheriff a little bit, and eventually the private investigator is like, we should talk to the FBI, and so then the FBI gets involved in he continues talking with the FBI and they're kind of in this back and forth working together for months and months trying to track down who stole his four hundred thousand dollars and USB with personal information on it, personal information His codes is bitcoin while uh and it's interesting seeing I watched an interview with this private investigator and she was like, she's like, well, they never caught the guy who stole the briefcase. They assume it's someone that he knew, and they are fairly confident that everybody he knew was just using him for them all right, sure, and the parties and all this stuff. He was buying them stuff all the time, yea. And so they're like it could have been literally anybody he knew. Sure, nobody he had was a real friend. And so they never tracked that down. But then the I r S calls the FBI and it's like, hey, can we come see what's going on there? And then we meet this guy, yeah pretty much, and so hey, if we get down there, well he signed something for me. I'm just really impressed with him. And so the I R S shows up this investigator, Uh, the FBI investigator takes the two I r S agents and shows up at his door one day and is like, hey, we're we're looking into your case. Still, we're trying to track them down. I got too investigators from Washington out here with me, and we want to take a closer look. I didn't tell him it was the RS. It's like he's like, can we take a look around? Like can uh, we just want to come and ask you a few more questions and see some stuff to help us with our investigation. And so they sit down in the living room and they kind of just you know, chop it up with him. For like a half an hour or so, and so they asked him how he made all as much all his money. They're complimenting his house and all this stuff. And then finally like they gained some good uh with him, and uh, they're like, hey, can you give us a tour of the house. And so they give him a full tour of his house, told them all about He's like, okay, and you don't need to move. You just literally just see it all from just turning around, Like the vedroom's over here, the second one is right here, there's the bath. He's in a mansion. We talked about some of the stuff. Well, you still have to move though. He's got those little like things just stand on and it moves around the house. Got one of those like big closet pantries that he converted into his camera room. Butler ladies, who's a hello, everything is above board? Hello, Jimmy calls me rombis rombies. Gosh, it was right there right there. That's funny. I was going to make that joke in a few seconds. Yeah, you just beat me to it. It sucks, doesn't it. And so because they're vacuum it wasn't that funny. It wasn't funny, Roby, it was right there. Just keep going. You're enjoying it, and you're enjoying Tilling. You've been around for a little bit. I want to invite you to be a part of our patreon. We have a patreon that has early access to all of our episodes, add free content, both audio and video. We have a discord with our host and producers. That's a ton of fun getting to hang out with all of our patrons in there. We also do once a month now we do these live streams with our patrons. We hang out, we get to know each other, we eat pizza. It's a blast, along with a bunch of other benefits like a merch discounts message on your birthday, like fun stuff. It's definitely worth it. We're having a blast with our patrons. But if that doesn't sound like something for you, they get the heck out of here. Just kidding, No, we love you. Thanks for checking out Tilling podcasts. How do they how do they get it? Though? I realized I forgot to put a CTA in mind. Oh Dad, you're doing Yeah, they can text Till in the six six, eight sixty six. Thanks Jared. I just want you to rest on that, Okay, I want you to. TAM's enjoying Jaron being humbled. So he he gives them a full two Okay, I don't know if that's what I would say is going on here. I don't think we would go that. Okay, Okay, my apology. So he gives them a full tour of the house, and he shows them his security room, shows them all the information about all his security system. They want to go to the because the vent was the old place. So that was at the old place, and heah, well, now there's bigger and better vents, right, which probably should have teed them off that they're not looking into this case, but it didn't, okay, and so they uh there. He's guiding them around the house and then finally they get into like a server room and like what's this. He's like, Oh, this is my mining rig. And then they're like, oh, can we see it? And he's like sure. So he opens up a laptop and he's actually like he's like hold on, He's like, I gotta you can't look at my pass code. So he's got are going are zero A S T B three three? He says it out wud he can't die the one finger type, and so he types in his password and then he turns to the computer around to show that he's got like a million a bitcoin and they're like, hm, hm, that's interesting. And so they wearing body cans now have enough information to say he's got a secret server room in his house that has a lot of bitcoin on it. There is a he has taxes. I mean, are you no? I wasn't lying, but I have buried the lead. It's like, so there's a flamethrower on the wall in his house. Uh wait, wait, why did you say it like that? I buried the lead. So there's a flame thrower the wall of his house? Did he was? He personal friends with Elon musk I maybe how else do you get a flame? They saw? They saw on the screen on the wall of your house. I don't have it displayed showing it in your I got a wife. She won't let me put that up on the wall. I hid mine in my dryer. Do you not use your dryer? No? Yeah, for my clothes. Where do you hide money in your house? It's a real question. He doesn't have any money. Where do you hide the cash in your house? I don't you use cash, You use cash. We use cash when we save for like we're going to we're going to canconce have separate accounts for that with with this, really, I mean we're not paying for it as one of our friends who's like super rich, but uh no, we use cash. We just pull cash out because we won't want to spend it. We want to put it somewhere and write it somewhere. Yeah, you just have a separate account for stuff like that. We only actually have three cats. One of them is just where we put all our money. Yeah, it's the fourth one. He's just a fake if he's open smiles and yeah, it was the best system. But it works for us. Yeah, it looks out pretty good. Yeah, it's kind of messy when we have to collect, is it. That's what Dave says, your money? Yeah, fake cat. Well he says, you want to put your money, if you're saving, you want to put it somewhere where it's difficult to get it there. Yeah, well I meant to make real cat. That's some cats more difficult. That's some cat flow right there anyway. So yeah, so they they have evidence on their body cams that he's got millions of dollars in a Bitcoin account on the body camps. They also have evidence that he has a flame throw on the wall, a really pretty intense security system and uh uh a couple of the rifles worried. They like if they did if they did a raise in the house, be id not. They have all that information already. They had a hunch about him, but they've had enough. They now have enough information with they invited the f b I guy into his home and showed him the flame flower on his flame flower? Flame flower? Wow, how's it feel? Humbled? So I would no the idea saying like they're going to raid his house? What are they like, he's got a flamethrower? Like we have tanks? Who gets they You're welcome, just bob. It just Boba's house. They they they have enough, They have a hunch about him, but they don't have enough evidence for them to be able to get a war. But like, I don't understand why he if he knew that the FBI hadn't arrested him yet, why he would invite him into his house and be like, here's my flame because he thinks to find that for her. I guess that that doesn't happening. Does he not know how the law works? No, clearly, I think he does. But I think he thinks he's about clear. We're buddies. I don't know if I would say above, but I just he thinks he's fine. I think he doesn't realize that the have you ever invite the FBI into your home behind your flamethrower? I think he doesn't think there's anything he's done wrong. Yeah, I think he doesn't. At one point did the SEC regulate all of the stuff about holding you know, bitcoin and having a bunch of money that you know you were It was I think it was after this, yeah, but still the FBI. The FBI had had a hunch on him. He stole he stole the wallet, no, his own, his own briefcase of four hundred thousand dollars. He stole his own. The reason they were doing this is to get a warrant. So they got the warrant, they were able to then come and what they did this is really interesting. They came back a couple of weeks later with a warrant. A bunch of cops hit around the corner, like around the block, around the corner, but around the block, and that FBI agent came and was like, hey, I just need to grab a little bit more data from you for our investigations. Like sure, and so he's like, he lets him in. They signed into the computer and we got you. We got you loser, No, a little bit more finesse than that. What he did instead was he said he got him the long in. Once he logged in the computer, he was like, was like hey, He's like, he's like, view, looks great out your balcony right now. Can we go take a look at that le And so he tells him, He tells him it's a fake agent. Oh, and they go in and feel all of it because he's not the real FBI. It's not the I R S. It's just something. It is his eyes. They got to steal the briefcase. Look at you, he tells you. Yeah. He tells him, hey, let's go look outside. And so he's like, he's like, look out. He turns and starts walking out towards the balcony, and as he turns, the guy reaches in his pocket and slides a USB into the computer. And what it was is it's what's called a wiggler. Remember, yeah, keep your mouth moving, Yeah, no, so the compute by the time all the guys in around the around the corner, around the block got there, the computer wouldn't have turned off the screen saver, and so they still had access to all of his stuff because otherwise, Yeah, this sounds like Okay, let me tell you, I'm not one of those people that listens to True Prime true prime podcasts. Listen to one true Prime one that's true. Yeah, Jared's like my podcast to hold up the merch. Yeah, you can buy this at time or shot dot tailing dot com or tailling dot com, slash shop or slash merch or read the Actor dot com. I forgot about that. I read a lot. And so it makes sense that you know, if it's out in the open with a search warrant, they have access to it. So yeah, I don't know, the wiggling open so they're not having to touch the computer. But he put they're not real No, I know that, and so the computer won't lost either way. They need access to the computer. Fruit Salad like the game or the song So plus died and Jimmy's like, do you care Fruit Salad by the Wiggles. He's like, no, no, I know you're it's a weird side effect that they put it the program that really like hurts the salut ability of it, but you know whatever, it's a side effect. So they go out on the balcony. They sit down on the balcony and they're looking out at the view and he's like, man, that's a great view. Jimmy's like, yeah, it is, isn't it. And he's like He's like, Jimmy, I got to tell you something, and uh, Jimmy's and he says, he says, Jimmy, he says, you're under arrest. And he says, he says, we've we've been not looking into the robbery that was committed against you. We've actually been looking into the Robbie that robbery you committed. And Jimmy turns around and looks inside and there's like fifty cops in his living room going into well okay, and so are they real cops? So they take him, they take him to jail, and uh, they take him to jail. They're real cops. That's an interesting idea, but it's not the truth. So they took him. I mean, people are shouldn't do that with somebody. You try, don't look like I think, well, I absolutely look at a cop. Okay, okay, multiple times, like people have said, like that guy's an undercover cop except for the fact that you're, you know, a comedian. Is that your cover, that you're a comedian? The truth? What I'm saying, Like no, like I'm saying like uber passengers have thought I was an undercover cop. Interesting, when we were on Hollywood Boulevard, one of the street performers like grabbing the other stup performers and pointed straight at me and went, do you have great guys a cop? Do you have great pasture? Do you have great cost a good posture? That's a copsture? This all the time. Yeah, that's a police it's the belt. They got the thumbs in the in the vest. The FBI showed up and they were like, phil Off, dude, R has been investigating this case. Thirteen, they arrested a guy named Ross Olbricht. Oh wow, they were falling for a minute. Yeah, so well not him. So in twenty thirteen. October one, twenty thirteen, they arrested a guy named Ross Olbricht who went by the user name dread Pirate Roberts. He founded a little dark website a website on the dark web. The Silk Road and the Silk Road was a ubiquitous dark website for years, where that's like setting yourself up to fail. The silk Rug silk Rug. As soon as somebody arrested him, they're like, oh, the rug pulled out from beneath you, isn't it. That's just why you will silk Road, So okay, that's different. But as soon as he got arrested, they were like, you chose that road, you know it works. You still got to have a good like detective lineah when you get somebody. But that's what was true. That's part of the process. And you create like you know you're creating a dark website. You're not. You don't. I only use light mode. You don't have to. You can take the time to think about it before you name it something like the silk Road. I mean, the silk World is kind of a cool name for it. I mean, that's just stealing those it was the actual Silk Road. Silk Road was eBay for illegal stuff, and so it was drugs and hacker wear and these guns and just anything stolen and illegal was on the site. And it was all done with bitcoin and what you would do what the lady posted my hats on there, probably the one that stole your box, that'd be I seized the site after they arrested, and now they operate it and got some stolen stuff. They also missed the opportunity to call it steel bad. Check out our check out our pop up shop, and so they the way they did it was kind of clever because bitcoin, every time a transaction happens to Bitcoin, it goes into the blockchain and you can track everything that happened. Well, what they did is they did a thing called mixing, So every time money went through this site, it mixed everybody's money together, and so it was like here's a whole bunch of tras transactions and it was still technically traceable, but it was such a jumbled mess that it would be nearly impossible to track where each of those individual coins came from. So he mixed it all up. It was money laundering, but digitally digital laundry. Yeah, just like neo pets. They had clothes right tell the story, to tell the story. And so our friend Jimmy, when he was in college and developed that cocaine habit, he was like, hey, this would be a great place to get cocaine. Yeah, And so he started purchasing cocaine on steel, bear on on silk, rude steel on soid and so he's buying this cocaine. He doesn't do it for long because he realizes that his local dealer had better stuff. Order online, but that was his downfall. Well, one day, the way it worked is you would deposit all your funds in, you'd make your purchase, and then you'd withdraw whatever leftover funds that you had, and so you kind of left him on your account just to make the purchase. Then you pulled him out. Well, they'd get mixed in and then you pull him out, and then it was theoretically untraceable. One day, he's on that site and he goes withdraw and he just kind of like flinches or something and double clicks and realizes that it double withdraw, So he got twice as much money money, and he was like, that's interesting, and so he tries it. He makes a deposit and he double clicks again and it works, and so he's like, wow, I know how that goes. And so he sits down and he starts doing some investigation. Double click and so highs this is active day. This is a wiggle two point zero. Wow. If only were that easy. Oh, I figure those out with coke rewards too. Type in the thing and if you double click, redeem double the coke awards. We bought an RV that way. Nice. Uh. So he invests, or I shouldn't say invests. He invests some time to figure out how much money, how much bitcoin is actually in the silk road, because it can only pull much they like it has. The money has to exist for him to be able to pull it. It figures out there's about fifty thousand dollars in bitcoin in that site, and so he makes a deposit and then he just clicks clicks a whole bunch up to where he withdraws the entire site's worth of bitcoin. Okay, and then he's like, sweet, I got a bunch of bitcoin. Well. Ross All finds out about this, and he's like, hey, let me steal a briefcase. Let me check out your fence. Here's the thing. It mixed everything up, and so it still got mixed. It was still hard to trace. But Ross was able because obviously he's like, all the money's wrong on my site. He was able to follow all of those chains and realize they all went back to a common place and was like, because it's the same wallet address, when he should have been smarter about that. So he tracked this guy down and he reached out to him and was like, hey, let's be friends. He's like, hey, thanks for finding that vulnerability on my site. Could you tell me how you did that? And he told him I actually clicked. He told him how he did it, and he actually sent Jimmy an extra five thousand bitcoin for exposing this vulnerable. Wow, thanks for stealing from me. Man, here's five thousand dollars. And so we need better criminals today. So he takes that what he takes that money that bitcoin? Did he did he like give him? Well, no, he says, he says, I mean it got patched, so that wasn't airn actual vulnerbilityymore. But he's got a lot of bitcoin, fifty bitcoin, and so he says, well, this is worth a lot, and it looks like this is going to keep going up, and so he does the one thing he never did, and he says, I'm going to save this, I'm gonna hold onto this, I'm not going to party with this because he's got a lot of legitimate bitcoin he can party with. And so he takes the whole motherboard out of that computer, wraps it in a towel, and puts it in one of those Christmas popcorn containers. Yeah, okay, this one. I just want to say, where do you hide your money? Yeah? And he hit it. I'll tell you where we hide our money. Yeah, where is it? He hesitated. It's in his cat. It's in the fourth cat, the fourth cat. And so he hides that away. Why do you think Lenny's so fat? It makes sense. It's all coming together now. He's a pillow pet. Open up the stuff. That's where he's been hiding it ever since. His dad. Didn't patten it right away. He just hid his money in there and then and so he left that. He let that sit there. And when he did this heist, this double click heist, it was worth about thirteen million dollars that he was able to pull out of out of the silk road. When he was arrested the value of the bitcoin on that motherboard had rose to three point eight billion dollars. Oh wow, cow, because it went up because it wasn't like eighty thousand dollars a bitcoin. Yeah, it went up a lot, and the FBI was like, we got to figure out how to make that ours. Here's the thing. This guy honestly like the majority of the money that he was spending in his everyday life, he had earned legitimately. Majority of the stuff he did, except for the drug stuff was legal. It was kind of sad, but legal. This this thing was in a weird way. It's hard to say whether or not this action was legal or not. Like he was using a dark website that was where a lot of illegal money went through, but he didn't purchase anything illegal with this thing. He stole money from someone to put money in and just pulled more money out than he put in. Yeah, he was breaking a lot of laws. Yeah, and so he the the courts were having a hard time figuring out what they could charge him with because it was not none of it was real. There was no real laws against all them. And then then the guy that he ended up stealing from gave him more money. So I mean he was like he was going to press chargers or anything. Yeah, that guy was, and that guy's in prison. He's not getting any of that money back, So it's not like they're going to charge him against him. So what they ended up figuring out was part of the Ross, part of the Ross, the Ross all brikes case. Whenever he got arrested. Part of the terms of that was Ross had to turn over all the funds that he earned through Silk Roade, which was about nine billion dollars. But holy cow dude, he could only account for one billion that he turned over, and so there was still eight billion out there that the FBI was trying to track down that they said is technically theirs to seize whenever they could track it down. The issue is they were pretty confident that the majority of that bitcoin was likely already in circulation, which is an interesting point. If you have purchased bitcoin, there's a pretty good chance that, technically speaking, under this case belongs to the FBI, even if you obtained it legitimately, because it passed through the silk Road, it's technically a part of this. And they say about a lot of like, you know, because art, dealing in art had to do with a lot of people, you know, you could value it whatever you wanted and so it was clandestine, and people do the same thing with cryptocurrency because it's not real. Yeah, and so I'm not surprised by that. Yeah. So that at any point, if the FBI could figure out that your bitcoin was connected to the Silk Road, they could just say, hey, that's ours crazy, which is nuts. And that's what they did with this case. So they seized three billion dollars from a good thing. We've got that blockchain, and what they they sentence them to a year and a day in prison. Sees that three billion dollars a year and a day. Yeah, it's a weird sentence. Sixty six great and real strong sense. So he doesn't miss his one year party. Guys, you get a party in jail, Happy jail Birthday, Happy jail Day two, and they beat the crap out of you, one hit for every year you've been in there. So thankfully, thankfully it's from every prisoner. You know, people usually die like seven years in yeah, because that's a lot. Where are all you know that, Because then if all the prisoners are dead and there's less prisoners beating you each year, you survived long enough, that is true, But then the next year you have to punch yourself because like it's your duty, it's your duty as a prisoner. Okay, so like guards. The guards will watch like no, no, no, you your so if you if you had to go to jail, you know, and they take care of all your food and all of me. You know, because you guys have talked about this, Yes, would it still be worth it if you had to endure it? Just just one self inflicted torture, whether by yourself or somebody else, but like one good punch one year. Oh yeah, guaranteed, there's one guarantee normal like every one normal days. Okay, honest, you you look like a so that would be real bad for you. Every thinks you're if you look like a cop, everybody hard time. Yeah, they're gonna think you're either either you're undercover or turned dirty. And that's word tell that's so strange. A year and a day of prison. Yeah, so he does prison for a year and a day. And it's interesting the investigator I watched a like CNN interview and he said, he said, you know, it's interesting. What Jimmy did was he kind of accidentally stole from ross Olbricht. But if he hadn't done that, and we seized that bitcoin when we arrested ross Olbricht, we would have seized thirteen million dollars, but because of what Jimmy did, we seized three point eight billion dollars. So he kind of helped us out a lot. That so annoying, but it's like super helpful that he did that. But so we're still thankful for his crimes. So now he's any way, I gotta get on my boat. He's he's served his Yeah, this sentence, he's he got out, and now he's a lift driver in Georgia. No way, Yeah, because I mean he can't get to bitcoin anymore. All that's gone. His real estate investments dried up because it's obviously what about the about Memphis. Yeah, so that guy got screwed in the deal because he had already like started making the moves because they come. But yeah and then yeah, so he got caught in my back. So that was a pretty big bummer. Yeah, So this is an interesting story because it's hard for me to say that this guy was a criminal. I think, like that's what I said. I said, he didn't realize he did anything wrong because he stole from an illegal place. What about the cocaine, Now he got a felony for the cocaine and like, yeah, being on the silk road probably was bad, but at this point it's been like seven years. Actually that all happened. Dealing of the money, I really can't fault him for because he just double clicked and then the guy I gave him five thousand dollars for it, So the guy thanked him for it, like he can't get in trouble. He's like, I don't think he thought he could get in trouble for that anymore. I think he was just like, I'm gonna let that grow as big as i can let that grow, and at some point I'm going to pull that out, but I'm just gonna let that grow. Yeah, that's interesting. Anything else he did his limitations on, like theft, Yeah, you know that's a good because if you steal let's say one hundred thousand dollars and you just dump it into the stock market, right, yeah, and then the statute notations run out on your theft se that's like eighty years later. I think it depends on the value. Can you still pull that out? Because I think that's the thing is like the FBI really went through a lot of hoops to figure out how they could seize that money because they were like, that's a lot of money. We need that. Sure. I think if it's enough money, they're gonna be like They're like, we're going to figure out. We got to figure out how to figure out how this we thought about who thought I was killing about? Just you know, he lives at Lake Lanear. He lives at Lake Lanear. That's where we killed most of the people. They could have killed him. They Hey, thanks for watching this episode of Things on the last night. If you like our show, please subscribe to do you know miss seeing more in the future. And then we've also got like clips and other episodes and a bunch of other stuff that we've created. We've been doing this show for a long time. Uh, but we're glad that you're here now, So please go enjoy our other stuff. Or if you hated us, please just block us. I know, never come back, never be here again. I never want to hear from you.


In 2013, a young man named Jimmy discovered a vulnerability on the notorious dark web marketplace Silk Road that allowed him to steal $13 million worth of bitcoin. At the time, this was an unfathomable sum of money. Little did Jimmy know, this impulsive theft would make him the accidental mastermind behind one of the biggest bitcoin heists in history.

Jimmy came from a difficult background. He was bullied relentlessly as a kid and had a troubled home life. In college, he found solace in his computer science studies and even contributed some code to the early bitcoin network. After graduating, Jimmy began casually buying drugs on Silk Road using bitcoin.

One day, Jimmy accidentally discovered he could double withdraw funds from Silk Road by double clicking the withdraw button. After confirming this worked repeatedly, Jimmy withdrew every last bitcoin from Silk Road’s coffers – over $13 million worth. The Silk Road founder, Ross Ulbricht, eventually traced the theft back to Jimmy. Surprisingly, instead of being angry, Ross was impressed with the hack and sent Jimmy an additional 5,000 bitcoin as a reward.

At this point, Jimmy could have cashed out his bitcoin fortune and lived lavishly. However, he decided to hold onto it and see how high its value could go. For years, Jimmy hid the small motherboard containing the private keys to his massive bitcoin wallet in a Christmas popcorn tin tucked away in his home.

By the time Jimmy was arrested in 2019, the value of his bitcoin had skyrocketed to a staggering $3.8 billion. The FBI had been closely tracking Jimmy and his suspicious bitcoin holdings ever since his “heist”. When agents finally raided Jimmy’s home, they hit the jackpot – the biggest bitcoin seizure in history.

In the end, Jimmy served just a year in prison and was allowed to keep a small portion of the bitcoin. However, the US government seized nearly all of it. Just like that, Jimmy’s impulsive teenage bitcoin heist had made him one of the richest bitcoin holders in the world. Despite his questionable methods, Jimmy proved that with a simple computer, an internet connection, and a bit of cunning, anyone could harness the explosive potential of bitcoin.

Things I Learned Last Night is an educational comedy podcast where best friends Jaron Myers and Tim Stone talk about random topics and have fun all along the way. If you like learning and laughing a lot while you do, you’ll love TILLN. Watch or listen to this episode right now!

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Sources

Jimmy Zhong- Wikipedia


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