In November 2021, American police surrounded a lakeside mansion in Georgia.
In the basement, they found a safe.
Inside, there was $661,000 in cash, gold bars, and a jar of Cheetos.
The jar held 51,680.32 Bitcoins.
To understand how this fortune ended up there, we need to know James "Loaded" Zhong – the owner of the mansion.
A classic nerd, he loved exploring obscure forums online.
In 2009, one post in particular caught his attention.
Eight years later, James would become one of the biggest #Bitcoin whales.
Curious, Zhong mined a few thousand #BTC at home, just to see what would happen.
He had just entered college with near-perfect entrance exam scores.
Like any 18- or 19-year-old, he spent a good portion of his #BTC on parties.
Alcohol, psychedelics, and other harder stuff.
Ironically, James's addiction made him even richer.
For convenience, he started buying his powder from a site called Silk Road, the largest Bitcoin marketplace of the time.
Then, one day, when he went to withdraw #BTC from the site, our protagonist encountered something unexpected...
The site was incredibly slow.
Impatient, James started clicking the "withdraw" button furiously 😤
When he checked his wallet, he was stunned to see he had received DOUBLE the balance he actually had to withdraw 😮
He blinked, checked again. And voilà.
He had just found the real-life "Klapaucius."
Silk Road had a flaw that allowed users to exploit a second function while the program was performing another task.
In this case, "double-spending bitcoin."
In the following days, Zhonginho lived the happiest time of his life ☺️
He drained about 8% of the site's reserves 😱
He then reported the bug to the Silk Road owner and, as a reward, received some extra coins.
He sent 40,000 BTC to one address and 10,000 to another, where they remained for almost a decade.
James Zhong, at 22 years old, was now one of the largest Bitcoin holders on the planet 👑
What would you do if you had 50k #BTC stashed away? 🤔💭
James chose to make waves online.
I bet many of you would do the same.
He pretended to be an "asset manager" on Bitcointalk and built a legendary persona, one that would go down in history.
His name there was "LOADED" 🔫
The theft happened in 2012.
Zhong's coins were worth $1 million. He entered college "with life sorted."
But #BTC went from $10 to $1000 between 2012 and 2014 📈
By the time he graduated at 24, his coins were worth over $30 million.
He bought a house, a car – and started funding the party for his "friends."
Up until then, he had only spent the BTC he earned from mining.
If he had kept it that way, he probably would have never been caught.
But, intoxicated by euphoria, he made a mistake…
... and planted the seed of his downfall during his 3rd bull cycle in 2017.
At the height of the #Bitcoin "civil war," LOADED got carried away on Bitcointalk.
He challenged Roger Ver to a $20M bet, #BTC vs. BCash.
To prove his seriousness, he signed a message with the key to a wallet containing $44M in BTC.
But then, "on-chain rats" entered the scene...
... and soon they linked the wallet to the infamous address 1DkyBEK...
... widely known for its connection to the Silk Road drain, years prior.
🫥 After this revelation, LOADED disappeared from the forum and never posted again.
He knew he had made a huge mistake.
And it seemed he already anticipated the worst.
The 2017 bull run arrived, and James switched to "heir" mode.
The #BTC he had mined at $10 were now worth $10,000.
He bought several Lambos, rented yachts, traveled the world, and invested nearly $10M in real estate.
The flaunting didn't go unnoticed.
Then, on a fateful night in 2019...
James' house was robbed.
They took $400K in cash.
The broken windows shook our Bitcoin mogul.
He called the police, and a case was opened.
The investigation went nowhere.
The thief was never caught.
But the case caught the attention of the IRS...
After all, who keeps $400K in cash at home?!
They requested browsing records from Jaminho's ISP 👀
Mapped his wallets.
And eventually, they uncovered the connection first mentioned on Bitcointalk years earlier:
between LOADED wallets... and the original hacker from Silk Road 🫢
James never sold any of the BTC stolen from Silk Road.
The site’s owner even thanked him for reporting the bug.
He would have remained free if it weren't for that message and that bet in 2017.
Or, thinking about it, maybe it was just a matter of time before he got caught 🤔
Social deprivation was Zhong's Achilles heel.
Fortune had made him forget Rule No. 1 of Fight Club.
CNBC has a good document. on.
He received undercover agents, showed them suitcases of money he used to impress girls, and opened a laptop with 1,500 #BTC
James lived a movie-worthy life from 21 to 33 🎞️
Imagine watching #Bitcoin soar from $5 to $50K 🚀😱
A 10,000x increase in value.
And unlike some Faria Limers out there, this guy had no fear of "not being sufficiently allocated."
He was LOADED.
This is the story of one of the biggest WHALES in Bitcoin history:
James "Loaded" Zhong 🐳
James was convicted last year for money laundering at the age of 33.
He was arrested in Alabama in July 2023.
And that's how we ended up at the mansion siege in Georgia on 11/9/21.
The second-largest seizure in the history of the U.S. Department of Justice:
$661.9K in cash
51,680.32 #Bitcoin
Millions in real estate
Millions in precious metals
With the billions stored in the Cheetos jar, he could have bought over 7,000 houses like the one Zhong lived in.
Everyone has that friend who invested in #bitcoin early and became a bon vivant...
... but imagine being friends with LOADED?!
They say he handed out paper wallets of #BTC at night to everyone. Paid for trips. VIP access.
In the end, none of his friends were seen at the trial.
