Nov. 11 (UPI) — A Chinese woman who defrauded hundreds of thousands of retirees of more than $6 billion then fled to an English mansion has been sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison in the United Kingdom, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.
Zhimin Qian, 47, was sentenced to 11 years and 8 months in prison for one charge of possessing and one charge of transferring criminal property, namely cryptocurrency, under the Proceeds of Crime Act, London’s Metropolitan Police said.
Her associate, Seng Hok Ling, 47, was sentenced to 4 years and 11 months for transferring criminal property in the form of cryptocurrency. Both pleaded guilty to the charges in September.
Qian moved into a mansion she rented in Hampstead in north London after fleeing China. A year later, police raided the home and seized the large cache of cryptocurrency.
The Met recovered more than 61,000 bitcoin from Qian, which is the largest confirmed crypto seizure in the world, the Met said. Civil recovery proceedings are ongoing.
Qian persuaded retirees in China to invest in her fraudulent company, which claimed to be developing high-tech health products and mining cryptocurrency, the BBC reported. She scammed more than 128,000 victims between 2014 and 2017.
Investors hope to get at least some of their money back, the BBC reported. Any leftovers would go to the British government.
“If we can gather all the evidence together, we hope the U.K. government, the Crown Prosecution Service and the High Court can show compassion,” one victim told the BBC. He said the fraud destroyed his marriage. “Because now, it’s only that haul of bitcoin [cryptocurrency] that can return us a little bit of what we lost.”
When bitcoin surged, Qian was living well. Her assistant Wen Jian, who was sentenced last year to six years, said Qian spent most of her time lying in bed online shopping and playing videogames.
Her diary noted that she had plans to found an international bank, buy a Swedish castle and get close to a British duke, BBC reported. She even wanted to become queen of Liberland, a micronation in Croatia.
Police raided the home in Hampstead about a year after Qian moved in. They discovered hard drives and laptops with tens of thousands of Bitcoin.
“The more information we got about her involvement … that she was actually the leader of the fraud, not just a lower-down member … it became obvious that, yes, she’s very clever, she’s very switched on, very manipulative, able to persuade a lot of people,” Detective Constable Joe Ryan told the BBC.
Attorney General Richard Hermer said in a statement, “Together Zhimin Qian and Seng Hok Ling caused misery upon thousands of victims to fund their lavish lifestyles. Thanks to the close partnership between the Met and the [Crown Prosecuting Service], they have seized substantial amounts of cryptocurrency and secured the conviction and sentencing of these two prolific fraudsters — preventing more victims from coming to harm.”
“Our message is clear — criminal assets are not safe in the UK,” said Will Lyne, the Met head of Economic and Cybercrime Command, in a statement. “The Met remains committed to protecting the public and this outcome shows the lengths we will go to secure justice for victims.”