In 2012, a guy named Jimmy Zhang wanted to buy some cocaine.

So he went to a site on the dark web called the Silk Road, where you could buy all kinds

of illegal stuff.

You could buy guns on it, you could buy drugs, you know, the kind of products that would

maybe not be sold in legitimate businesses were available on the Silk Road.

But it was mainly used by people to buy drugs.

That's our colleague Bob McMillan, who covers cybercrime.

Zhang bought cocaine using Bitcoin.

And later, when he went to pull his Bitcoin off the Silk Road website, he discovered something

weird.

The way he describes it is he double clicked on a part of the website that allowed him

to get paid twice when he was trying to withdraw Bitcoin from it.

So he would put some Bitcoin in and then try and take it out.

And he found a way of getting paid multiple times.

So it was like a flaw in the site.

It doesn't sound like it was a really major flaw in the site.

But within a couple of days and just a few hours of effort, he withdrew 50,000 Bitcoins,

which at the time was worth just over $600,000.

It's like going to an ATM and trying to withdraw 20 bucks and instead it spits out 40.

It's like going to an ATM run by criminals and trying to withdraw 20 bucks and it spits

out 100.

Zhang had successfully robbed the Silk Road, a criminal enterprise, a 50,000 Bitcoin.

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