Woman arrested in UK with £5 billion worth of Bitcoin

Zhiming Qian, 45, also known as Yadi Zhang, has been convicted in the UK for her role in a multi-billion-pound Bitcoin scam, with £5 billion worth of cryptocurrencies seized from her, The Guardian reports.

She ran a scam in China from 2014 to 2017 that cost around 128,000 people their Bitcoin. British authorities made a breakthrough in the case in 2018 when they raided a mansion in Hampstead and seized devices containing 61,000 Bitcoin.

Qian admitted in court that she purchased and stored cryptocurrency obtained through criminal means between October 2017 and April 2024.

After committing the fraud in China, Qian fled China to the UK. A year later, the fraudster attempted to launder the money by buying property with the help of Jian Wen, 43. Wen was sentenced to six years in May 2024 for her part in the fraud.

Qian tried to flee after police raided a Hampstead estate and seized a safe containing digital wallets containing huge amounts of Bitcoin. Wen said she helped the woman run her jewellery business and insisted she had no idea about the scam and claimed Qian had tricked her.

In January this year, a judge ordered Wen to repay more than £3 million within three months or face another seven years in prison. The amount to be repaid was obtained from bitcoin and two properties in Dubai.

"This is one of the largest money-laundering cases in UK history and among the highest-value cryptocurrency cases globally. I am extremely proud of the team. Through a meticulous investigation and unprecedented cooperation with Chinese law enforcement, we were able to obtain compelling evidence of the criminal origins of the cryptoassets Qian attempted to launder in the UK … My thoughts are with the thousands of victims defrauded in this scheme," said Will Lyne, head of the police's economic and cybercrime unit.