A court in Great Britain sentenced 47-year-old Chinese citizen Zhimin Qian to 11 years and 8 months in prison. The woman has defrauded over PLN 128,000. people. During her career, she became known as the “queen of cryptocurrencies”. She hid her wealth in the blockchain.
The “queen of cryptocurrencies” will spend over a decade behind bars
In 2014-17, Zhimin Qian convinced 128,000 people. Chinese to invest money in her company, which was supposed to offer health-related products and mined cryptocurrencies. However, investigators determined that the woman had only appropriated investors’ money.
When investors began to suspect that something was wrong, Zhimin fled from China to the UK. At that time, she had 61,000 BTC. She started laundering money in Europe – she bought, among others, luxury real estate or gold. That’s when the services started to become interested in her.
The investigation lasted seven years, and the Chin woman was arrested two years ago. She admitted to the crimes she was accused of.
It is worth adding that Zhimin had an accomplice – a Chinese bar employee, Jian Wen, who in 2024 was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for her participation in the crime. She fell into a similar situation – she suddenly moved from a flat above a restaurant to a luxurious multi-million-pound house in north London. She also purchased two properties in Dubai for over PLN 500,000. pounds. Bitcoins worth over £300 million were confiscated from her.
What will the authorities do?
But let’s get back to the Zhimin case, because there is another thread here. UK officials are wondering what to do with its bitcoins. On the one hand, they should return them to the victims of the scam, but they lost “only” USD 862 million, and BTC is now worth several billion USD. Even after repaying the victims, several billion USD will remain in the hands of the services.
The idea is to partially cover the country’s budget deficit of up to 30 billion pounds ($40.5 billion) with bitcoins. Under applicable law, assets confiscated under the Proceeds of Crime Act are usually paid to the account of the Ministry of Interior or to the Consolidated Fund of the State Treasury. Some government officials, however, urge caution – such a decision could lead to a complicated legal battle over bitcoins that could drag on for years.
