Photo Metropolitan Police / Reuters. Qian Zhimin convicted of attempting to launder $6.5 billion
Qian Zhimin, dubbed the "Chinese crypto queen" by the press, was found guilty during a trial in which bitcoins worth $6.3 billion were seized from her. This case became the largest in British history related to cryptocurrency fraud.
According to the investigation, from 2014 to 2017, she managed a fraudulent project called "Lantian Gerui." This business was positioned as an investment company engaged in bitcoin mining and the development of high-tech medical products, but was actually a financial pyramid. More than 128,000 people, mostly retirees from China, fell victim to the scheme, investing over 40 billion yuan (about $5.6 billion) in the project.
Attempts to arrest Qian Zhimin by the Chinese police in 2017 were unsuccessful: she managed to escape to Myanmar using fake documents. Later, she made her way to the UK, where she posed as a wealthy heir to an antique dealer. She settled in a luxurious mansion in the Hampstead area of London, where she cashed out cryptocurrency obtained from deceived investors through intermediaries.
The police became interested in her when one of her assistants, Jian Wen, was unable to explain the source of the funds used to purchase property in Totteridge. In 2018, searches were conducted at her mansion, during which hard drives and laptops containing access to 61,000 bitcoins were seized — the largest cryptocurrency seizure in the UK at that time.
Qian Zhimin was arrested only in April 2024 in a rented house in York, when law enforcement tracked the movement of bitcoins through wallets associated with her.
