"Zhou" took funds recovered from "Chen" hostage in order to circumvent AML-regulations for suspicious private transactions at AurumXChange. According to him these funds locked at AurumXchange belong now to us Bitcoinica-creditors (which also means Zhou still privately holds further stolen funds). Even though I despise him for tricking his private funds free the question remains:
@AurumXchange can you unlock these funds and send them into the MtGox trust account? please give a status update.
So how much has Zhou Tong stolen and not yet returned?
@AurumXchange should keep the funds locked. Zhou has stated they are his personal funds, so it is between him and AurumXchange. He is keeping our bitcoins to fund his personal mistakes. In other words, he's charging a fee for stealing from us.
He actually stated that the funds belong to a "friend" of his for whom he was doing a favour selling LR. That makes it difficult for AurumXchange to release the funds to anyone until both their source and the legitimacy of of their origin can be established. If Zhou can't establish the funds as his, he can't give permission for them to be released to the Bitcoinica MtGox account (originally said he was going to do that and get the funds back of Chen - if Chen was able to reimburse him for that then Chen should be able to come up with another $40,000 to be sent through Patrick Murck).