British police uncovered $1.7 billion worth of Bitcoin linked to a woman accused of laundering the proceeds of a $6 billion investment fraud in China, prosecutors said at her London trial, according to Bloomberg.
Jian Wen, 42, a UK citizen, denies allegations she helped launder vast sums amassed by Zhimin Qian, wanted in China for running a fraud scheme that robbed around 130,000 investors. The whereabouts of Zhimin, also known as Yadi Zhang, are unknown.
The 2018 police raid at their rented London manor house uncovered laptops, pen drives and notebooks that saved passwords and stored crypto wallets containing Bitcoin worth hundreds of millions of dollars each, according to the prosecuting lawyer.
“Present at the property was Yadi Zhang, she was upstairs in bed,” the lawyer Gillian Jones told the jury. She later fled the UK.
The raid followed Jian’s attempts to two buy houses in London worth around $15 million and $30 million, which failed after she couldn’t give a lawyer involved in the deals enough proof of the source of funds.
Prosecutors said Jian had claimed to the lawyer in 2017 that Zhimin mined and “gifted the Bitcoins to me” as a “love present.” The house was to be the pair’s “first home,” the prosecution quoted Jian as saying. She had also searched online how she could use Bitcoin to buy property in the UK and sell Bitcoin without proof of funds, according to the prosecution.
In 2019, a Dubai-based investment adviser offered Jian a new way to sell Bitcoin locally for cash without any “due diligence needed and no questions asked,” Jones told the jury.
“Cool,” Jian had responded.
In a 2019 statement to the police, Jian had said she lived with Zhimin as a carer and translator and was gifted 3,000 Bitcoin for it. She knew little about Bitcoin and understood it to be the source of Zhimin’s wealth, Jian had told the police.
Jian was arrested in 2021. The same year, police also found a note that said “I’ll be dead if they broke the BTC code. They can’t access the other computer?” Jones told the jury.
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