Chinese ‘Bitcoin queen’ is jailed for six years

The Chinese ‘Bitcoin queen’ behind a £3 billion fraud wich ripped off 128,000 investors as she splashed cash in Harrods and tried to buy a £23 million mansion has been jailed for six years.

Jian Wen, 42, acted as a front of a Bitcoin scheme and alarm bells rang when she tried to buy some of London‘s most expensive properties. 

Police raided Wens home and seized a safety deposit box containing digital wallets holding more than £1.4 billion worth of Bitcoin at the time, but its value has now risen to around £3 billion.  

Wen, originally from China, denied but was convicted of one charge of entering or becoming concerned in a money laundering arrangement at Southwark Crown Court between October 2017 and January 2022.

The charge related to the laundering of 150 Bitcoin worth around £7.5m.

Wen had insisted she had no idea the Bitcoin came from the proceeds of fraud and claimed she had been duped by one of the fraudsters, but today she was jailed for six years. 

She said she helped run a legitimate jewellery business which had branches in Singapore, Malaysia and China.  

Wen moved to the UK in 2007 and lived modestly in Leeds between 2011 and 2017 before working at a Chinese takeaway in Abbey Wood, southeast London.

She answered an advert on Chinese social media app WeChat to be a ‘butler’ for a woman who claimed to run a business trading in diamonds and antiques across the world.

Just weeks after meeting Yadi Zhang at the Royal Garden Hotel, Wen and the fraudster moved into a £17,000-a-month Hampstead mansion after putting down a £40,000 deposit in September 2017.

She drove around in a Mercedes and after 18 months she had flew her son over from China and enrolled him in a prestigious £6,000-a-term Heathside prep nearby – while she was spending £30,000 a month at Harrods.

Judge Sally-Ann Hales, KC, told Wen: ‘I have no doubt that you came to enjoy the better things in life.

‘Evidence shows that you were generously rewarded for your services.

‘It is submitted on your behalf that your culpability falls into the medium range. I do not agree. The offending was sophisticated and it involved significant planning.

‘I do not agree that your involvement in the offence was due to any element of exploitation.

‘Whatever for circumstances were in September 2017, you were at no such disadvantage in June 2019.

‘I do not agree with your counsel’s characterisation of you as a victim.’

The judge said of the 128,000 investors who were ripped off in China: ‘It is a matter of common sense to expect, and it can reasonably be assumed that individual investors suffered economic hardship and loss.’

Wen, who has been in custody since March 2022, was jailed for a total of six years and eight months.

Prosecutor Gillian Jones KC earlier told jurors Wen did not dispute that she dealt with the Bitcoin.

‘The question you will have to answer in respect of each count is in fact a simple one, whether Miss Wen either knew or suspected that she was dealing with the proceeds of crime when she was dealing with that Bitcoin.

‘She chose to ignore the concerns raised and warnings given over the source of the funds.

‘No doubt because the defendant was paid handsomely for the role she played, transforming almost overnight the circumstances in which she lived.

‘As to income, records held by Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs, show that the defendant between 2015 and 2017 filed self-assessment tax returns.

‘In the tax year 2015/2016 she declared gross earnings from working at a Chinese takeaway in the sum of £12,800.

‘In 2016/2017 she declared income from working for APAC Sourcing Limited, a company which sources products from China in the sum of £5,979.

‘There is no record either by way of self-assessment tax returns or PAYE of the defendant receiving any income in the tax years 2017/2018 or 2018/2019.’  

The 42-year-old acted as a front for a £5billion racket masterminded by Zhang, also known as Zhimin Qian, who fled to the UK in 2017 after ripping off 128,000 investors in China.

Qian – whose name means money in Chinese – has since vanished, but she employed Wen to launder the proceeds in a series of eye-watering property purchases.

The pair travelled across Europe together selling Bitcoin to buy expensive jewellery including watches worth up to £70,000 from Van Cleef and Arpels in Switzerland.

Ms Jones said: ‘The defendant went on to travel extensively both nationally and internationally.

‘During those trips, Bitcoin was sold, and fine jewellery purchased, and we can see in communications that property in Europe was considered for purchase.’

Wen bought two apartments in Dubai for more than £500,000 and and began looking at bidding for a £10million 18th century Italian villa with views of the Tuscan coast. 

It was only when she tried to acquire some of London’s costliest properties, including a £23million seven-bedroom Hampstead mansion with a swimming pool and a £12.5million eight-bedroom home with a cinema and gym, that alarm bells started to ring about the unexplained source of her funds.

Wen was arrested in the summer of 2021 after officers raided her home.

Multiple devices were seized including a safety deposit box containing digital wallets including more than 61,000 Bitcoin worth £1.4 billion.

‘To legitimately mine the Bitcoin seized in this investigation, 61,000 BTC, you would have to use and pay for roughly the same amount of electricity as that required to power 25,000 domestic households for a year – that’s the size of a town,’ said Ms Jones.

Following her arrest Wen initially claimed the Bitcoin had been mined before claiming it was a ‘love present’ from another associate.

Ms Jones told the jury: ‘That is quite a pay cheque. You are going to have to look carefully at the circumstances of that purported gift.

‘A gesture by a very generous benefactor pleased with the care and assistance provided, or a device or sham to create an air of legitimacy as to the source of funds when Miss Wen attempted to purchase high value property.’

Mark Harris KC, defending, claimed Wen was acting under orders from others and she did not play a leading role.

‘It would be wrong to punish her for someone else’s criminality that she was not involved in and knew nothing about.

‘There should be left a potential room for others who may be convicted of much wider, and a much more significant degree of criminality.

‘Her lifestyle, that was made so much of, went from a luxury lifestyle to to a very much more modest lifestyle, more akin to where she had come from and not to where over those last three years she had been.

‘Ms Wen was a fragile, desperate woman whose self-esteem cannot have been in a very high place at all.

‘She was a vulnerable woman. She was undoubtedly duped and used.

‘Ms Wen’s father died in 2019. Her mother is in China. It is very unlikely that she will return to China.

‘Even of you impose a sentence that led to her imminent release, it is unlikely that she will ever see her mother again.’

Wen denied but was convicted of one charge of entering or becoming concerned in a money laundering arrangement.

The jury had failed to reach verdicts on two further money laundering charges and they were ordered to lie on file.

Andrew Penhale, Chief Crown Prosecutor, earlier said: ‘Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are increasingly being used by organised criminals to disguise and transfer assets, so that fraudsters may enjoy the benefits of their criminal conduct.

‘This case, involving the largest cryptocurrency seizure in the UK, illustrates the scale of criminal proceeds available to those fraudsters.

‘The CPS is committed to working closely with law enforcement and investigatory authorities, to bring to justice individuals and companies who engage in laundering criminal proceeds through cryptocurrency.’