A Chinese woman facing a lengthy jail term for her role in a multibillion-dollar bitcoin scam lived in luxury as she evaded the authorities for years, a British court heard on Monday.
Nicknamed the “goddess of wealth,” Qian Zhimin (錢志敏), 47, is accused of orchestrating a Ponzi scheme that defrauded about 128,000 people in China between 2014 and 2017, raising billions of dollars, much of which was converted to bitcoin.
Qian was arrested after British authorities seized 61,000 bitcoins (US$6.41 billion at the current exchange rate), believed to be a record in crytocurrency-related crime.
Photo: Metropolitan Police Service via AFP
The Chinese woman, who pleaded guilty to acquiring and possessing criminal property in September, was to be sentenced yesterday and faces up to 14 years in prison.
A Malaysian accomplice, Seng Hok Ling, also 47, admitted to money laundering at the same court and was also to be sentenced yesterday.
However, his case might be adjourned due to a potential misunderstanding over his previous guilty plea, the court was told on Monday.
Dressed in a blouse with floral patterns and her graying hair in a bun, Qian remained impassive as London’s Southwark Crown Court started the sentencing hearings in her case.
Following scrutiny from Chinese authorities, Qian — also known as Zhang Yadi (張雅迪) — fled her home country in 2017 using false documents to enter the UK. The court heard that she evaded British authorities for nearly six years.
She traveled across Europe, staying in fancy hotels and buying expensive jewelry including two watches worth nearly ￡120,000 (US$157,474), the court heard.
With the help of an accomplice called Jian Wen, she rented a lavish London property for about ￡17,000 a month and claimed to run a successful jewelry 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.
Documents later revealed Qian’s ambitions included a plan to become the monarch of “Liberland,” a self-declared micronation between Croatia and Serbia.
However, police surveillance of Qian’s codefendant Ling led to her arrest in the northern English city of York in April last year. Wen was last year jailed for six years and eight months over her role in the scheme.
Lawyer William Glover, who has represented victims in a civil legal action, said it was “possibly the largest legal case of its kind in terms of value involving an individual and not a corporate.”
Some of his clients had experienced enormous personal losses that affected their lives, marriages and families, he said.
The promised return on their investment stopped being paid out in 2017.
Fueled by growing interest, bitcoin, which was trading at about US$3,600 at the end of 2018, on Monday closed at US$105,996.
Details of a compensation scheme proposed by British authorities are still being thrashed out in London’s High Court in civil proceedings.
About 1,300 alleged victims have come forward, according to sources close to the case.
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