UK court jails Chinese bitcoin fraudster for over 11 years

A Chinese woman who masterminded a multibillion-dollar bitcoin scam and evaded authorities for years was sentenced to 11 years and eight months in jail by a UK court Tuesday.

Nicknamed the "goddess of wealth", 47-year-old Zhimin Qian was accused of orchestrating a Ponzi scheme that defrauded around 128,000 people in China between 2014 and 2017.

It raised billions of dollars, much of which was converted to bitcoin.

After she came to the UK and during a multiyear investigation where she evaded capture, British police seized 61,000 bitcoin worth more than £5 billion ($6.6 billion), believed to be a record in crytocurrency-related crime.

She was arrested in the northern English city of York in 2024.

Qian, who pleaded guilty to acquiring and possessing criminal property in September, received the sentence at London's Southwark Crown Court.

A Malaysian accomplice, Seng Hok Ling, also 47, was jailed at the same court for four years and 11 months after he pleaded guilty to one count of transferring criminal property.

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"It has been one of the largest money-laundering cases in UK history by value and the largest confirmed seizure of criminal assets in Europe," a spokesperson for London's police said at a briefing on Friday.

"In terms of what will happen with the bitcoin seized, the Crown Prosecution Services are leading a separate civil recovery process," the spokesperson added.

Lavish living

Following scrutiny from Chinese authorities, Qian -- also known as Yadi Zhang -- fled her home country in 2017 and came to Britain. The court heard that she evaded UK authorities for around six years.

She travelled across Europe, staying in upscale hotels and buying jewellery including two watches worth nearly £120,000 ($160,000), the court heard.

With the help of an accomplice, Jian Wen, she rented a lavish London property for around £17,000 a month and claimed to run a successful jewellery business.

Qian first drew the attention of British authorities in 2018 when she attempted to buy a London property and suspicions were raised over her bitcoin.

Officers raided the rented London home, where they found laptops containing a bitcoin fortune, but did not immediately grasp the scale of the fraud.

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But police surveillance of Qian's co-defendant Ling led to her arrest in April 2024.

Wen was jailed last year for six years and eight months over her role in the scheme.

Compensation for victims?

Qian's defence counsel said their client did not intend this to be "a fraudulent scheme from the outset" and "always believed that significant profits could be made from bitcoin".

On Monday, after her lawyer made a statement about her good behaviour in prison and noted her isolation due to difficulties speaking English, Qian shed a few tears.

Fuelled by growing interest, bitcoin, which was trading at around $3,600 at the end of 2018, is currently hovering around $100,000.

Details of a compensation scheme for victims proposed by British authorities are still being thrashed out in London's High Court in civil proceedings, where more than 1,300 alleged victims have come forward, according to sources close to the case.

A Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson told AFP that Chinese and British law enforcement agencies were "cooperating on cross-border fugitive and asset recovery" in the case.

Source: AFP