China woman condemned in the UK, after “the largest capture of cryptocurrencies in the world”
Zhimin Qian (47 years old). Credit: – / Shutterstock Editorial / Profimedia
A woman pleaded guilty to British justice for money laundering charges on Monday after London Metropolitan Police described as “the largest cryptocurrency capture,” Sky News reports.
Chinese citizen Yadi Zhang (47 years old), also known as Zhimin Qian, was arrested in April 2024, after spending years running.
She arrived for the first time in the United Kingdom in September 2017, using a false passport from Saint Kitts and Nevis, after orchestrating a scam in China, involving 130,000 investors in fraudulent investment schemes between 2014 and 2017.
The British police conducted the first searches in her home in Hampstead, northern London, on October 31, 2018. However, investigators only discovered over two and a half years over 61,000 bitcoins in digital wallets.
The cryptocurrencies were worth 1.4 billion pounds at that time, but the value has currently increased to over 5 billion pounds (about 30 billion lei), and the amount is claimed by both the British government and by Chinese investors.
The Metropolitan Police believes that “it is the largest cryptocurrency capture in the world.”
On Monday, Qian pleaded guilty to a Southwark court, where she was assisted by a tangerine translator. The woman will find her punishment at a later date.
In 2024, Jian Wen (43 years old) was sentenced to 6 years and 8 months in prison, after being found guilty of money laundering between October 2017 and January 2022, in connection with 150 bitcoins, worth over 12.5 million pounds – or about 62 million lei.
According to the trial, Wen was not involved in the alleged fraud, but helped mask the source of money, some of them being used to buy cryptocurrencies and illegally removed from China on laptops.
