Chinese national Jimin Qian, the self-styled tech entrepreneur behind one of the country’s biggest investment scams, was sentenced to 11 years and eight months in prison at Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday for orchestrating a massive pyramid scheme that defrauded more than 120,000 Chinese pensioners.
Chen, also known as Yadi Zhang, pleaded guilty in September to fraud and money laundering charges related to his company, Lantian Gelui, which promised to make riches from high-tech health products and cryptocurrency mining operations. She was sentenced to four years and 11 months in prison, along with her Malaysian colleague Seng Hoke Lin, for their role as her fixer and financial conduit.
The 47-year-old fled China in 2017 with a fake passport and settled in the UK, where she lived a life of luxury until her arrest in York in April 2024. When police raided her Hampstead Heath mansion, where she earns a monthly salary of $21,000, they discovered a trove of digital assets worth 61,000 BTC (currently worth about $6.4 billion), the largest in the Metropolitan Police Department. Historical virtual currency seizures.
At its peak, Mr. Qian’s company, Lan Tian Ge Rui, attracted billions of dollars in deposits from mostly older Chinese investors, many of whom were persuaded to invest at elaborate banquets and gatherings across China. However, Chinese authorities say the funds paid to investors come from deposits from new investors, not from cryptocurrencies or other businesses.
Prosecutors said Qian used patriotism and poetry to charm his victims, and even Mao Zedong’s son-in-law spoke at an event in Landian Gerui. When payments suddenly stopped in 2017, she disappeared and fled the country.
Qian’s ambitious plan
In London, Chen reinvented herself as an international businesswoman. In her diary, she envisioned renting a luxury home, making extravagant purchases online, buying a castle in Sweden, taking over a British bank and befriending a duke.
Her writings also revealed outlandish ambitions, including a desire to become the “Queen of Liberland,” as the small state along the Danube called itself. tron Founder Justin Sun is currently the Prime Minister.
Her network in the UK also included Jiang Wen, a former takeaway worker who helped launder millions of dollars through cryptocurrency exchanges and shell companies. Wen was sentenced to six years in prison last year for money laundering.
What happens to confiscated Bitcoins?
Tuesday’s verdict may have brought some closure to Qian’s victims, but the fate of the seized bitcoins remains unresolved.
Cryptocurrency acquisition is the subject of an escalating tug of war for wealth rights between the British government and China. Victim advocates say the bitcoins belong to defrauded investors, while Treasury officials have privately floated the idea of holding on to them to shore up Britain’s finances.
A civil lawsuit is underway to determine how and to whom the seized bitcoins will be distributed, a process that could take years. Lawyers said many of the victims did not send funds directly to Lantian Gerui, but instead to regional promoters, complicating their claims. They also paid in fiat rather than cryptocurrencies, raising questions about who would pocket the appreciated funds.
“The victims have been without assets for almost a decade and are entitled to recover their assets from Bitcoin frozen in this jurisdiction,” William Glover and Stephen Cartwright, who represent several of the defrauded pensioners, said in an earlier statement. decryption. “The British state has no right to freely dispose of frozen Bitcoin beyond the legitimate legal and property interests of the victims.”
Still other experts believe the UK government may want to retain some or all of the assets under the Asset Recovery Incentive Scheme, which returns confiscated funds to law enforcement agencies and government coffers.
Nick Harris, CEO of cryptocurrency recovery company CryptoCare, said: decryption Unlike the practice in the US and Australia, where funds are often extensively reused, keeping cryptocurrencies can be strategic. “In this case, there could be a positive move for UK Bitcoin reserves,” he said.
“By retaining the confiscated Bitcoin, the UK will be able to strengthen its position in the global crypto economy while establishing a strategic reserve and supporting victims through alternative compensation mechanisms.”
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