“Bitcoin Queen” gets 11 years in prison for $7.3 billion Bitcoin scam
A Chinese woman known as the “Bitcoin Queen” was sentenced in London to 11 years and eight months in jail for laundering Bitcoin from a £5.5 billion ($7.3 billion) cryptocurrency investment scheme.
The sentence follows a seven-year investigation by the Met’s Economic Crime team into international money laundering, which revealed that the 47-year-old woman, Zhimin Qian (also known as Yadi Zhang), was the head of a large-scale fraud campaign that defrauded over 128,000 victims in China between 2014 and 2017.
This action also led to the seizure of 61,000 Bitcoin worth hundreds of millions of pounds at the time and now valued at roughly £5.5 billion, the largest cryptocurrency seizure in Britain’s history.
Another member of the fraud ring, 47-year-old Seng Hok Ling of Matlock, Derbyshire, was sentenced to four years and 11 months in prison for transferring criminal property (cryptocurrency) under the Proceeds of Crime Act (2002).
“She went on to convert a portion of the illegally obtained funds into cash, jewellery and Bitcoin, before fleeing to the UK under an assumed identity,” the Met said in a Tuesday press release.
“Following intelligence in 2018 about the attempted realisation of criminal assets in London, investigators worked tirelessly to build a case of evidence against her.”
The UK’s seizure of 61,000 Bitcoin, worth $7.3 billion, is now the largest single cryptocurrency seizure in history after surpassing the U.S. Justice Department’s 2022 confiscation of over 94,000 Bitcoin related to the Bitfinex hack, valued at approximately $3.6 billion.
The Bitcoin Queen
Qian raised over 40 billion yuan from around 130,000 Chinese investors as the mastermind behind a scam network that promised them high returns of 100%–300%.
She earned the nickname “Bitcoin Queen” in China for promoting Bitcoin as “digital gold.” After her scheme collapsed in 2017, she converted all the proceeds to Bitcoin and fled to the United Kingdom, where she attempted to launder the cryptocurrency through property purchases with the help of an associate named Jian Wen.
However, Qian and Ling were arrested in 2024, when law enforcement also seized assets worth £11 million ($14.4 million), including cryptocurrency wallets, encrypted devices, cash, and gold. Wen was also sentenced to six years and eight months in prison on May 22, 2024, for her role in the scheme.
“There is no doubt this is one of the largest and most complex economic crime investigations we have ever undertaken, and today’s sentence would not have been possible without working closely with our partners from the Crown Prosecution Service, National Crime Agency and Chinese law enforcement,” said Will Lyne, the Met’s Head of Economic and Cybercrime Command.
“Organised crime groups are using cryptocurrency to move, hide, and invest the profits of serious crime – but every crypto transaction leaves a trace, and the Met works meticulously with partners to follow that digital trail, identify assets and bring offenders to justice.”
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