Cryptoqueen who fled China for London mansion jailed over £5bn Bitcoin stash
18 minutes ago Share Save Tony Han Global China Unit Share Save
Metropolitan Police Qian Zhimin enjoyed a lavish lifestyle of travel and shopping before UK police discovered her stash of crypto
A woman, said by police to have bought cryptocurrency now worth billions of pounds using funds stolen from thousands of Chinese pensioners, has been sentenced to 11 years and eight months for money laundering. Passing sentence at Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday, Judge Sally-Ann Hales told Qian Zhimin she was "the architect of this offending from its inception to its conclusion... your motive was one of pure greed". After fleeing China, Qian moved to a mansion in Hampstead, north London. The Metropolitan Police raided it a year later and made one of the world's single largest crypto seizures. More than 100,000 Chinese people invested their money in her company - which claimed to be developing high-tech health products and mining cryptocurrency. In reality, she embezzled the funds, police say. Investors have told the BBC World Service they hope to get at least some of their cash back from the UK authorities. Anything left unclaimed would normally default to the UK government - leading some to speculate that the Treasury could stand to gain from the haul. "If we can gather all the evidence together, we hope the UK government, the Crown Prosecution Service and the High Court can show compassion," said one victim we are calling Mr Yu, who says his marriage failed as a result of the fraud. "Because now, it's only that haul of Bitcoin [cryptocurrency] that can return us a little bit of what we lost." Qian Zhimin, 47, arrived in the UK under a fake passport in September 2017, after Chinese police started investigating her. She moved into a mansion on the edge of Hampstead Heath, at a rent of more than £17,000 ($22,700) a month. To pay for this, she needed to convert her Bitcoin stash back into money she could spend. So she posed as a wealthy antiques and diamond heiress, and hired a former takeaway worker as her personal assistant, who she asked to trade the cryptocurrency into other assets, such as cash and property.
Metropolitan Police On fleeing China, Qian rented this house in Hampstead
As Bitcoin rocketed in value, Qian could achieve what her company promised its investors - that they could "get rich while lying down". Her assistant Wen Jian - at her own trial last year, which culminated in a six-year jail term for money laundering - said Qian had spent most of her days lying in bed, gaming and online shopping. But Qian was also drawing up a bold six-year plan for future schemes, according to her diary. Her notes outline plans to found an international bank, buy a Swedish castle, and even to ingratiate herself with a British duke. Her grander stated objective was to become queen of Liberland, an unrecognised microstate on the Croatian-Serbian border, by 2022. In the meantime, Qian had Wen look for houses she could buy in London. But her attempts to purchase an especially large property in Totteridge Common - an area known for its substantial, secluded residences - triggered a police investigation when Wen was unable to account for her boss's wealth.
Attempts by Qian to buy this property in Totteridge sparked a police investigation
Police raided Qian's Hampstead rental property and uncovered hard drives and laptops found to be loaded with tens of thousands of Bitcoin - believed to be the single largest cryptocurrency seizure in UK history. Qian had set up the company through which money was embezzled just four years earlier, in her native China. Lantian Gerui, or Bluesky Greet in English, claimed to use investors' money to mine - or generate - new Bitcoin, and to invest in a range of pioneering technological devices. But UK police believe this was an elaborate scam, and that Qian's company was simply using promises of high profits to pull more and more investors into the scheme. "The more information we got about her involvement… that she was actually the leader of the fraud, not just a lower down member… it became obvious that yes she's very clever, she's very switched on, very manipulative, able to persuade a lot of people," Det Con Joe Ryan from the Met told the BBC. One of her investors, Mr Yu, says he never suspected anything was wrong because the company drip-fed him a portion of his apparent earnings - just over 100 yuan ($14, £10) - every day. "That made everyone feel really good, it even gave us the confidence to borrow a little more to invest in the company," he says. He and his wife had initially invested 60,000 yuan ($8,429, £6,295) each. They were told, he says, they would make a 200% profit over two and a half years. They were soon taking out thousands of pounds' worth of loans at interest rates of up to 8%, in order to invest more. In addition, Mr Yu reinvested his daily payouts back into the company as soon as he received them. "There was no rule that you had to reinvest your earnings, but I suppose we were just too weak to resist. They just pumped up our dreams… until we lost all self-control, all critical judgment."
Chinese social media Qian Zhimin's company staged huge meetings and banquets for current and prospective investors in China
Investors saw their daily payouts topped up for each new person they signed up. This helped the scam reach some 120,000 people, based in every one of China's provinces, according to documents from trials in China of the company's official promoters. Their deposits totalled more than 40bn yuan ($5.6bn, £4.2bn), the UK's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) has found. A former company employee later testified that it was new investors' money that had been funding the daily payouts, not crypto-mining dividends. Lantian Gerui's marketing exploited the loneliness of many middle-aged and elderly Chinese. Qian wrote poems about social responsibility, with lines such as: "We must love the elderly with the infatuation of a first romance." The company also organised mass holidays and banquets for current and potential investors. These were used to promote yet more investment opportunities - slideshows and card machines at the ready. Lantian Gerui also trumpeted its love of China as a nation, another ploy calculated to appeal to the elderly. "Our patriotism was our Achilles' heel, that's what they exploited," says Mr Yu, who is in his 60s. "They said that they wanted to make China number one in the world." A range of speakers endorsed the company, including the son-in-law of the late Chairman Mao, the founding father of the People's Republic of China - Mr Yu said. "We in our generation all looked up to Chairman Mao, so if even his son-in-law was vouching for it, how could we not trust it?"
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