UK jails Zhimin Qian after record 61,000 Bitcoin seizure

A London court jailed Chinese fugitive Zhimin Qian, also known as Yadi Zhang, for laundering funds from a 40 billion renminbi ($5.6 billion) investment fraud, a case linked to the UK’s record seizure of 61,000 Bitcoin during a 2018 Metropolitan Police investigation.

Qian was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday after pleading guilty in August to possessing and transacting in criminal property. Prosecutors told the court she ran an unlicensed investment scheme in China between 2014 and 2017, taking money from about 128,000 investors and moving proceeds through cryptocurrency. The force has described the laundering probe as its most complex economic crime investigation to date.

According to the prosecution, Qian fled China in 2017 after authorities raided an event tied to her firm. She traveled through Southeast Asia and Europe using false identities, including a St. Kitts and Nevis passport, before settling in the UK under the alias Yadi Zhang. She avoided countries with extradition treaties with China and lived in rental mansions in Scotland and York.

A transfer of 8.2 Bitcoin into a monitored wallet led to Qian’s arrest at a property in York in 2024. Officers found multiple digital devices containing cryptocurrency wallets valued at more than £60 million, around £48,000 in cash and jewelry. The 2018 seizure of 61,000 Bitcoin was then regarded as the largest confirmed cryptocurrency seizure worldwide. Authorities are working on returning assets to victims.

Judge Sally-Ann Hales addressed Qian in court: “You were the architect of this offending from its inception to its conclusion. The scale of your money laundering is unprecedented.” The judge added: “Your motive was one of pure greed,” and noted that Qian “lied and schemed” while recruiting others to help her evade justice for more than seven years.

The Met’s head of economic and cybercrime, Will Lyne, noted that organized crime groups use cryptocurrency to move, hide and invest criminal profits, but emphasized that “every crypto transaction leaves a trace.”

Concerns initially arose when a city law firm flagged an attempt to buy London property using Bitcoin, prompting the wider inquiry and subsequent seizures.

Qian’s lawyer, Roger Sahota, stated after sentencing that she “accepts her conviction and the mistakes that led to it,” adding that “she never set out to commit fraud but recognizes her investment schemes were fraudulent and misled those who trusted her.” Following her arrest, prosecutors said Qian largely declined to answer police questions, other than claiming she felt she would die soon and wanted to spend money while she could.

While on the run, Qian rented high-end homes, spent heavily on luxury goods and explored purchasing property in London using cryptocurrency. Prosecutors alleged she planned to sell about £200,000 worth of Bitcoin each month to fund her lifestyle and even sought to style herself as the “monarch” of Liberland, a disputed strip of land on the Danube between Croatia and Serbia.

A government agency is now working on a process to identify and compensate investors who lost money in China, subject to court orders and asset recovery rules.