UK jails Chinese ‘cryptoqueen’ after $6.3 billion bitcoin seizure
By Ryan General
A London court on Tuesday sentenced 47-year-old Zhimin Qian, dubbed the “cryptoqueen,” to 11 years and eight months in prison for laundering criminal proceeds from a multibillion-dollar investor fraud in China. Police recovered 61,000 bitcoin connected to her with an estimated value of about $6.3 billion. Qian entered the United Kingdom in 2017 using a forged St Kitts and Nevis passport and attempted to convert the funds into property and high-value goods.
- Scheme operations: Between 2014 and 2017 Qian operated a company in China called Lantian Gerui, also known as Blue Sky, which drew deposits from more than 128,000 investors. Authorities determined that the scheme collected about 40 billion Chinese Yuan ($5.6 billion). Investigators found that large sums were transferred into cryptocurrency, including about 70,000 bitcoin routed through an account at the Huobi exchange. At sentencing, Judge Sally Ann Hales told Qian, “You were the architect of this offending from its inception to its conclusion … your motive was one of pure greed.”
- Flight to the UK: Qian fled China in July 2017 carrying a laptop that held access to bitcoin wallets and traveled through Southeast Asia before arriving in Britain in September 2017 under the alias Yadi Zhang. In London, she rented an upscale property in Hampstead and began attempts to purchase additional high-value real estate, which prompted suspicious activity reports in 2018. Subsequent searches of residences and electronic devices led investigators to 61,000 bitcoin along with transaction records linking the cryptocurrency to proceeds of the Chinese scheme. Qian was arrested in York in April 2024 while in possession of false passports, encrypted devices, cash and gold.
- Asset recovery: Qian pleaded guilty in September this year to possessing criminal property and transferring criminal property under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002. Her associate Seng Hok Ling received a sentence of four years and eleven months for assisting in moving illicit funds. British authorities have placed the seized cryptocurrency and related assets into civil recovery proceedings to trace additional holdings and prevent their dissipation.
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