However, unlike other troublesome teenagers whenever they have alcohol, Zhong is a computer expert and his house is equipped with an extremely advanced surveillance system. He called to report that he had just been robbed of a large amount of valuable digital money. Refusing to get into an ambulance to go to the hospital for treatment of panic disorder, Zhong began to explain, “I am a Bitcoin investor, a type of asset on the internet.”
 Jimmy Zhong with two girls at a party
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Since this is the first case of digital money that the Athens Police Department has received, they have been quite confused and have not made any progress in the investigation. So Zhong asked for help from Robin Martinelli, a private investigator in the area who currently owns and operates the Martinelli Investigation Company in nearby Loganville.
Although not specializing in digital money investigation and having just undergone surgery to amputate a leg, Martinelli still feels motivated to accept the task. She started by carefully reviewing the videos stored in Zhong’s surveillance system and discovered a male figure, slightly thin, on the night of the robbery.
Robin Martinelli
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This suspect seems to know his way around Zhong’s house, leading Martinelli to believe that it is a friend or at least someone who has heard Zhong brag about his Bitcoin. From the video, Martinelli was able to determine the suspect’s height and even the size of his hands.
She began monitoring Zhong’s friends, following them to their homes and the bars on the street. She also tracked their cars and searched their social media accounts for investigation purposes.
After a period of observation, Martinelli believed that Zhong’s group of friends was “fake, not really caring about others, and may be taking advantage of him a little.” However, she noticed that Zhong seemed to disagree with her hypothesis, especially when her investigation team focused on his group of friends. In the end, Martinelli identified one person among them whom she believed had stolen Zhong’s 150 Bitcoins. At that time, this amount of Bitcoin was worth nearly $600,000.
“Zhong didn’t want to hear that,” Martinelli recalled. “He got angry when I mentioned someone knowing where the cash was hidden. He believed that a close friend had betrayed him and caused him harm. He just wanted to be loved.”
“Zhong is a kind-hearted guy,” a friend confirmed.
The luxurious, incomprehensible life of an unemployed person
People in Athens feel the same way about him. Before being robbed, everyone knew Zhong as the “money thrower” in this town. He was willing to treat the whole bar in happy times.
Although he lived in a modest one-story wooden house, Zhong had stayed at luxury hotels such as the Ritz Carlton, Plaza, and Waldorf Astoria. He drove expensive cars and shopped at high-end stores like Louis Vuitton, Gucci, and Jimmy Choo. Furthermore, he bought a second house with a yacht dock in Gainesville, Georgia, to store various expensive wines and assets.
Zhong lived in luxury, and no one knew where his income came from. In their eyes, he had no profession. He only told his friends that he had mined thousands of Bitcoins from the early days of Bitcoin.
In 2018, when his favorite Georgia Bulldogs football team played at the Rose Bowl Stadium in Los Angeles, he hired a private plane to take the whole group of friends to cheer for the team and gave each person an extra $10,000 to shop in Beverly Hills.
At that time, Zhong had no idea that a small group of undercover agents from the IRS’s criminal investigation unit was also diligently searching for answers to a computer hacking case involving the theft of 50,000 Bitcoins from the Silk Road website in 2012.
Over time, the value of those Bitcoins had risen to $3 billion. The investigators were able to trace the location of the funds on the blockchain but did not know the identity of the new owner. So, they quietly monitored and waited for many years until the thief transferred the funds from one account to another, adding or withdrawing a small amount to conceal the money’s source.
Finally, Chainalysis, a blockchain analysis company specializing in tracing digital wallets containing stolen assets on the Silk Road, discovered that the intruder had made a very small mistake. He had transferred a small amount of around $800 from the stolen funds to a digital currency exchange platform that complied with industry rules, including a process called KYC, which requires users to enter their real names and addresses.
The account was registered under the name Zhong Jimmy. The transaction took place in September 2019, six months after Zhong’s emergency call to the local police. However, that evidence alone was not enough to prove that Zhong was the intruder who stole the Bitcoins. They needed solid evidence.
Therefore, the IRS called the Athens-Clarke County Police Department for assistance. At that time, the investigation into Zhong’s robbery had not made any progress.
So both sides came up with a plan. They would approach Zhong, pretending to be investigating the robbery at his house, but in reality, they were targeting the case they believed he was the one who hacked the Silk Road website to steal a significant amount of Bitcoins that were now worth billions of dollars.
When the three investigators knocked on the door of Zhong’s house in Gainesville, he eagerly opened it. He believed that they had come to help him solve the unresolved robbery.
“If I can do this, I will treat you guys to a drink,” Zhong said.
They entered the house, complimenting the door and Zhong’s dog, and requested to take a tour of the house. They tapped the floor, looked into the recessed cabinets, and inspected the wooden areas. Zhong had no idea that they were searching for any hidden compartments.
Zhong took them to the basement. They carefully examined Zhong’s security system and asked him to explain its features. Zhong also showed them a metal safe that he claimed once held $1 million in cash to impress women.
A while later, the investigators asked Zhong to open his laptop and explain how he obtained those Bitcoins. Zhong asked them to turn away and then entered the password. When the laptop was turned on, the three investigators saw Zhong’s Bitcoin wallet.
“Oh my God, his wallet shows a Bitcoin amount worth 60 or 70 million dollars,” one of the three investigators recounted. That was enough to convince them they had found the right person.
On November 9, 2021, with a formidable team, they returned with a search warrant for Zhong’s house. A staff member connected a special device to Zhong’s laptop, allowing them to access password-protected content. They also found another hidden computer inside a metal canister used for popcorn, containing another stash of Bitcoins worth millions of dollars.
Thanks to the canine unit, they also found a hidden safe buried in the concrete under the basement floor, containing precious metals, stacks of cash, and some Bitcoin coins minted in the early years of the digital currency, along with the Bitcoin wallet from the Silk Road hacking incident in 2012.
So Zhong was arrested and sentenced to one year and one day in federal prison.
The US government confiscated the Bitcoins that Zhong had stolen and sold to contribute to the public fund, allocating a portion as a reward to the Athens-Clarke County Police Department for their assistance.
As for the robbery at Zhong’s house, the police have still not caught the perpetrator. Zhong’s dog, Chad, was sent to be fostered by a friend.
