If you donât live in the Czech Republic, you may not understand this story. A few years ago, when the government wanted to promote tourism in the Czech Republic, it came up with the slogan âland of stories.â The Czech Republic is truly a land of stories. This story is about how a former locksmith created a marketplace serving drug cartels and arms dealers, then disappeared with 5,000 bitcoins and ended up in prison for a few years. And when it seemed that no one wanted him anymore, he offered the Ministry of Justice a gift worth 468 BTC. Just like that. The minister accepted the gift because it was âcrystal clear.â Only to find out the next day that it came from the âexit scamâ of one of the largest illegal marketplaces, Nucleus Market.
Do you think I made this story up? I wish I were such a good storyteller. Letâs retell it together and put it into context.
Sheep Marketplace
To begin JiĹikovskĂ˝âs venture into cryptocurrencies, letâs look back to 2011, when the âonline marketplaceâ Silk Road was founded, operating on the âdark webâ via the anonymous TOR network.
On Silk Road, you could offer and buy anything, but given the anonymity of both parties and the anonymity of payments via cryptocurrencies (at that time, Bitcoin), the items sold there were mainly things you wouldnât want to ask for at a corner store. That is, weapons, drugs, stolen data, and often illegal work of all kinds. The Silk Road marketplace ceased operations in 2013 when the FBI arrested its founder, Ross Ulbricht, after identifying him. Incidentally, Ross Ulbricht, who was sentenced to life imprisonment, was pardoned and released by President Trump in January 2025.
The Silk Road case highlighted the potential of such intermediary marketplaces. And so, followers soon appeared on the dark web, in the dark depths of the internet accessible only to âinsiders,â but not to Google. In May 2013, even before Ulbrichtâs arrest in October 2013, an advertisement promoting Sheep Marketplace was published on the Bitcoin Forum.
The post is written in beginnerâs English, but linguists later conclude that it contains errors typical of Slavic languages (missing articles, Slavic word order, problems with prepositions, etc.) â and it also mentions the Czech framework Nette.
Sheep Marketplace gradually grew, gaining the biggest boost in October 2013 when Silk Road was shut down. It is essentially a simple discussion forum where supply and demand are matched, buyers deposit their bitcoins in escrow on the marketplace, and if the transaction is settled to the satisfaction of both parties, the marketplace transfers the funds, retaining a commission.
Everything worked well until November 21, 2013, when a user named EBOOK101 discovered a flaw in the marketplace. This flaw allowed EBOOK101 to repeatedly withdraw Bitcoins from the escrow account without the system properly verifying that the funds had actually been released and the transaction completed. As a result, he was able to transfer far more Bitcoins than he was actually entitled to, draining tens of thousands of BTC from the marketplace. The marketplace subsequently closed money transfers from escrow and shut down completely on December 2, 2013. Its (as yet unknown) operator melted into the role of the victim.
The initial theft of 5,400 Bitcoins was resolved in 2014. The FBI monitored the wallets to which the funds were transferred, and when the funds were transferred to the popular exchange Coinbase, the thieves were identified as Nathan Gibson and Sean Mackert. At the time, they were 24 and 21 years old. They faced 20 years in prison, but I was unable to find out what happened to them. In 2020, they appealed, arguing that they were not âtraditional criminals.â The funds and assets that the FBI managed to track down were seized, but many accounts remain âdormantâ wallets with no activity for many years.
JiĹĂkovskĂ˝ is a suspect
On discussion forums, especially on Reddit, users are conducting their own âinvestigationâ of cryptocurrency users, and suspicion has fallen on TomĂĄĹĄ JiĹĂkovskĂ˝ for a number of reasons. The Czech police are quickly investigating these suspicions â there is a lot of circumstantial evidence, which is enough for the community to be âcertain,â but not enough for the Czech courts.
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Originally published on Medium on June 2, 2025.
