Quote from: HI-TEC99 on Today at 04:50:02 PM

Quote from: nutildah on Today at 03:28:14 PM

Quote from: cAPSLOCK on Today at 02:46:38 PM

Assuming the IRS-CI folks actually took custody of the BTC, How in THE HELL did Zhong justify storing ~50k BTC in a way so insecure that this could even happen? Maybe they only have the addresses, and the private keys are somehow secure (like maybe a simple BIP39 passphrase???).

I am all for keeping your setup simple so you don't lose the coins via complication. But there is either more to this story, or our dear "Loaded" was incredibly ill prepared.

Reading through the court document it sounds like the feds just knocked on his door and said "Give us your Bitcoins." And he said "OK." He was also ill-prepared.

...

They found some in a popcorn tin in his bathroom, and those look like casascius coins, or some other type of physical bitcoins.

https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-63547765

Quote

Officers say they found the Bitcoin dotted around his home on hard drives and other storage devices in an underfloor safe and on a tiny computer hidden inside a popcorn tin in a bathroom closet.

They always have to make it sound so dramatic. Fuckin' hidden floor safe, popcorn tin or whatever. Most people don't overtly display easily removable items of value even inside their own homes.
Initially, I would imagine everything in his house should have been "hidden" from the police officers. For example, I have some underarm deodorant hidden in a shaving kit stuffed away in a gym back hidden under a crib in my bedroom but that's just were I keep it between workouts... there might be some bitcoin on a USB stick wrapped in some stinky socks hidden in the side pocket of it too but nobody knows about either of those items! Oops.