A Chinese woman, nicknamed the ‘Goddess of Wealth’, was convicted in the UK for playing a key role in the single largest cryptocurrency seizure in the world, worth more than £5 billion (approximately BD2.5 billion).
Zhimin Qian, also known as Yadi Zhang, pleaded guilty on Monday to illegally acquiring and possessing cryptocurrency through a large-scale scam.
A total of 61,000 bitcoins were seized from Qian, the London Metropolitan Police said.
Between 2014 and 2017, she cheated more than 128,000 victims in China and stored the stolen funds in bitcoin assets, the police said in a statement.
Capitalising on cryptocurrency’s popularity at the time in China, she defrauded her victims, mostly between 50 and 75 years old, through her company, which claimed to invest in projects across China.
She promised daily dividends and guaranteed profits to investors who poured "hundreds of thousands to tens of millions," according to a 2024 report from Chinese media outlet Lifeweek.
She fled China using false documents and entered the UK, where she attempted to launder the stolen money by buying property, said the police.
The woman pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court in London following a seven-year-long investigation into her global money laundering scheme.
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