Qian Zhimin pleads guilty in the UK. The market value of 61,000 Bitcoins has reached 49.3 billion yuan: he stayed in bed for 20 hours a day to command, and used Bitcoin to buy a luxury house in London, which alerted the police; the lawyer analyzed "who ow

Nakamoto 2025-10-31 21:34 36988人围观 BTC

On October 30, Tianjin police issued a report on the case of Tianjin Blue Sky Green Electronic Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Blue Sky Green") suspected of illegally absorbing public deposits. The report stated that on April 21, 2017, t

According to the report, on April 21, 2017, the Hedong Branch of the Tianjin Municipal Public Security Bureau opened a case to investigate the case of Blue Sky Grei suspected of illegally absorbing public deposits. The main suspect Qian Zhimin fled to the UK. The city's public security organs and British law enforcement agencies have carried out in-depth international cooperation in the pursuit of fugitives and stolen property. On September 29 this year, the Southwark Court in London, England, held a trial on Qian Zhimin's suspected money laundering crime. Qian Zhimin pleaded guilty in court.

At present, the public security organs are still continuing to cooperate with British law enforcement agencies in cross-border pursuit of fugitives and recovering stolen goods, and are doing their best to recover the losses of fund-raising participants. At the same time, fund-raising participants are reminded to cooperate with the public security organs in handling cases in accordance with the law. The public security organs have not entrusted third-party institutions to provide legal guidance to fund-raising participants who plan to appear in court, and have not entrusted third-party institutions to carry out cross-border pursuit and recovery of stolen goods. Fund-raising participants are requested to identify so-called cross-border recovery agents to avoid being deceived.

▲Qian Zhimin pleaded guilty in court in September

Qian Zhimin mentioned in this report is suspected of being involved in the largest Bitcoin money laundering case in the UK. She admitted related charges during a trial in London on September 29. According to British police disclosures, the case involved 61,000 Bitcoins (market value approximately RMB 49.3 billion), and Qian Zhimin admitted in court that he had obtained and held these illegal gains. In the case of Blue Sky Green illegally absorbing public deposits, more than 120,000 Chinese investors were involved.

From the "Huahua" who was veiled in China, to the "Bitcoin rich woman" in a wealthy area of London, and finally to the prisoner who was arrested wearing jogging pants, Qian Zhimin's dream of "three generations of wealth" came to an end.

The veiled "goddess":

“If you give Gree three years, Gree will give you three lifetimes of wealth.”

Regarding Qian Zhimin, in the UK, she is the 47-year-old "BitQueen" (Bitcoin Queen), with the pseudonym Zhang Yadi (transliteration). In China, she is known as "Huahua" among its investors, a "disabled strong woman" who is deliberately deified and never shows her true colors.

According to China News Weekly, few investors really know the details of Qian Zhimin. What everyone passes on by word of mouth are only the public slogans of Blue Sky Gerui and those unconfirmed legends. In these legends, "Huahua" has a glorious image: she "graduated from Tsinghua University, has double doctorates, studied in the United States, and understands finance."

Han Xinghai (pseudonym), an investor from Shenyang, once heard that Huahua brought back a lot of "cutting-edge technology" from the United States. At a promotion meeting, he once asked Qian Zhimin why he was not allowed to take pictures. "She said it was because American technology was brought back to her, and if it was revealed, the United States would impose sanctions on her." Zhang Li (pseudonym), an investor in Hohhot, Inner Mongolia, recalled that in 2016, she participated in a promotion meeting with thousands of people. At the meeting, Qian Zhimin was wearing a pink and white veil, sitting in a wheelchair, and was lifted high by everyone in the wheelchair.

According to reports, the crowd held her high while chanting slogans, one of which was Lantian Gerui’s “famous” slogan: “You give Gerui three years, and Gerui will give you three lives of wealth. ”

According to the "Daily Economic News" report, Qian Zhimin is the actual controller of Lantian Gerui. Between 2014 and 2017, the company used the banners of environmental protection development, smart elderly care, and Bitcoin mining to attract public deposits with promises of returns of up to 300% as bait. The court verdict showed that Blue Sky Green illegally absorbed a total of approximately 40.2 billion yuan, involving more than 120,000 fund-raising participants across the country.

In July 2017, Blue Sky Gerui’s capital chain was broken, causing a “thunder” across the board, and Qian Zhimin had already begun frantically transferring investors’ money. According to reports, an audit at the time showed that more than 1.14 billion yuan of the funds controlled by Qian Zhimin was used to purchase Bitcoin. After the incident, she used a forged passport to flee abroad, taking a laptop with an encrypted wallet with her, and arrived in the UK via Laos. In the UK, she adopted the pseudonym Zhang Yadi and transformed into a "rich woman" with a huge amount of money.

The boss stays in bed for 20 hours a day to give orders.

Assistant runs errands and launders money by "buying, buying, buying"

In 2017, when Qian Zhimin arrived in London with a forged passport, she faced a thorny problem: she had a priceless 61,000 bitcoins in her black laptop, but she barely understood English and had limited mobility due to a car accident in her early years. She needs a local agent who can help her "launder" these "digital gold" and monetize them in the UK.

According to reports, Qian Zhimin quickly posted a recruitment notice in a Chinese WeChat group, recruiting an "assistant" with a monthly salary of 4,000 pounds (approximately 37,000 yuan). She claimed she was in the "jewelry and real estate business." This recruitment notice "captured" Wen Jian (transliteration), a British Chinese woman who was in financial difficulties at the time.

▲Wen Jian found guilty of money laundering

Wen Jian holds a diploma in law. She immigrated to the UK with her husband in 2007. After their divorce in 2010, she lived alone with her son in Leeds, facing financial constraints. In the summer of 2017, she moved to London to look for opportunities, working in a Chinese restaurant during the day and sleeping in a dark basement at night.

The two hit it off immediately. Wen Jian quickly became Qian Zhimin's "housekeeper" and "executor" in London. Together they moved into a six-bedroom mansion in Hampstead, a famous affluent area in north London. According to reports, the monthly rent of this mansion is as high as 17,300 pounds (approximately 160,000 yuan), and they paid half a year's rent at once.

According to Wen Jian's confession after her arrest, when her employer stayed at home, he spent about 20 hours a day on the bed in the bedroom, playing games, shopping and engaging in Bitcoin transactions on his laptop. And Wen Jian's job is to quickly convert the cash from Qian Zhimin's transaction into real luxury assets. Wen Jian became a frequent visitor to the luxury department store Harrods, purchased a Mercedes-Benz car, etc., and accompanied Qian Zhimin on a trip around Europe. Qian Zhimin also paid for Wen Jian to take his son to London and arrange for him to attend the aristocratic school Heathfield. In return, she helped Qian Zhimin open a company in the UK and handle accounts, trying to make the black money look "legitimate."

Using Bitcoin to buy a mansion alerted the police.

Caught after 6 years on the run

In 2018, as the UK Financial Regulatory Authority began to crack down on crypto-asset money laundering, Qian Zhimin and Wen Jian found that it became increasingly difficult to convert huge amounts of Bitcoin into pounds.

▲Qian Zhimin is hiding in a mansion in London

In September 2018, they tried to use Bitcoin directly to buy a super mansion in Hampstead worth 23.5 million pounds (approximately 200 million yuan). In the UK, such a huge real estate transaction must undergo strict "anti-money laundering" (AML) review, and lawyers must clearly know the legal source of the funds. When Wen Jian was unable to explain the source of the money, instead of being completely successful, the transaction alarmed the British police.

In October of that year, the police raided their mansion, which they rented for 17,300 pounds a month. During that operation, the police seized Qian Zhimin's laptop and other digital devices, and froze the 61,000 bitcoins at that time. What is dramatic is that the British police did not immediately realize the amazing value of these Bitcoins and did not immediately arrest Qian Zhimin.

▲Police raid Qian Zhimin's mansion

After the police raid, Qian Zhimin "disappeared". She once again used her counter-investigation capabilities to abscond in the UK for nearly six years.

Wen Jian was not so lucky. In May 2021, she was arrested and brought to justice. In March 2024, Wen Jian was convicted of assisting money laundering and sentenced to 6 years and 8 months in prison. It was also in 2021 that when the British police were handling Wen Jian's case, they cracked the device seized that year and discovered that the 61,000 Bitcoins had soared to billions of pounds at that time, making this case "the largest cryptocurrency seizure in British history."

One month after Wen Jian was convicted, in April 2024, Qian Zhimin, who had disappeared for many years, was finally captured by the police in Yorkshire, northern England. Police reportedly found another digital storage device in a "special hidden pocket" in a pair of jogging pants she was wearing when she was arrested. It was not until September this year, when Qian Zhimin decided to plead guilty in prison, that she finally provided the prosecutor with the access code of the device and two wallet passwords. Hidden inside is her last asset: Bitcoin and Ripple coins worth £67 million.

Who owns more than £5 billion in stolen money?

Lawyer: Frozen Bitcoins Don’t Belong to UK Government

After Qian Zhimin was arrested and handed over all assets, the cryptocurrency worth more than 5 billion pounds was controlled by the British Crown Prosecution Service (CPS).

According to reports, the British Treasury, which is facing a fiscal gap of 30 billion pounds, has "eyes on" this money. Some Treasury officials privately asked whether this money can be used to "plug" the hole in the budget.

Under the UK's Proceeds of Crime Act, if seized criminal assets end up unclaimed, or if the claim fails, the money will be forfeited. As usual, half of the money will go to the British police and the other half to the British Home Office.

As the "custodian" of the assets in this case, the British Crown Prosecution Service's position is more important. Stephen Parkinson, the prosecutor general of the British Crown Prosecution Service, announced that they are "setting up a compensation plan" to compensate the victims in China.

According to reports, the plan is to seek a "civil recovery order" with the purpose of "compensating the victim for the lost investment." However, whether the lost investment refers to the "principal" of the year or the "present value", the British Crown Prosecution Service has not yet made it clear. According to the report, the key issue with compensation at present is that "it is unclear whether victims will only receive the original investment amount, or an amount that takes into account the significant increase in the value of Bitcoin since their investment." ”

The report pointed out that when the scam was exposed in 2017, one Bitcoin was worth about 750 pounds. Today, the price of one Bitcoin has risen to more than 83,000 pounds. If the victims can only get back the money distributed in proportion to the principal, then the "big part" of the stolen money, that is, the huge profits brought about by the surge in Bitcoin, will remain in the hands of the British government.

William Glover of Fieldfisher law firm, which represented more than 1,000 victims in the case, said: “Some (victims) have lost their life savings, many of them are elderly or vulnerable... The frozen Bitcoin does not belong to the UK government. The British government has no right to override the legitimate legal and property interests of the victims and dispose of frozen Bitcoins at will. ”

Red Star News reporter Deng Shuyi synthesizes China News Weekly, Daily Economic News, etc.
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