A Chinese woman just pleaded guilty in what’s become the biggest cryptocurrency seizure in history, involving over $6.7 billion worth of Bitcoin that was stolen through a massive investment scam back in China. Zhimin Qian, who was also going by the name Yadi Zhang, finally admitted in a London court that she illegally got her hands on tens of thousands of Bitcoins through fraud.
The whole scheme ran from 2014 to 2017 in China, where Qian tricked more than 128,000 people into investing their money by promising them high daily returns and huge profits. It was basically a classic scam that took advantage of China’s crypto craze at the time, with victims including regular professionals and even retirees who got convinced by friends and family to throw their money in.
UK authorities ended up seizing 61,000 Bitcoin after a seven-year investigation that started back in 2018 when someone tipped them off about suspicious digital asset transfers. Qian had been hiding out in the UK using a fake identity and tried washing the money by buying expensive real estate.
She didn’t pull this off alone either. A woman named Jian Wen helped her launder the stolen funds and got six years in prison last year. Wen went from living above a Chinese restaurant to owning a luxury place in North London and two properties in Dubai worth over half a million pounds.
The Metropolitan Police called this a huge breakthrough in fighting crypto crime after years of painstaking work across multiple countries.
Conclusion
Chinese national Zhimin Qian pleaded guilty in London to orchestrating a $6.7 billion crypto fraud targeting 128,000 victims, resulting in a 61,000 BTC seizure.
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