As Chinese police closed in on the architect of a massive Ponzi scheme that cost thousands their life savings, a woman in her mid-40s was taken by an accomplice to the Myanmar border on a moped to begin nearly seven years on the run.
After zig-zagging across Southeast Asia, she landed at London’s Heathrow airport in September 2017 on a forged St Kitts and Nevis passport in the name of Zhang Yadi.
Until her arrest in April 2024, Zhang – whose real name was Qian Zhimin – converted bitcoin into cash to buy jewellery and luxury goods, travelling with an assistant across Europe while avoiding countries that extradite to China.
Before and during Qian’s sentencing this week, prosecutors and police cited documents collected during their investigation, plus information from Chinese authorities, that provide some insight into Qian’s life and criminality.
Qian was sentenced at London’s Southwark Crown Court yesterday to 11 years and eight months in jail for laundering proceeds of the China fraud using bitcoin. Shortly after her arrival in Britain, she sent an accomplice to Thailand to collect a laptop which contained part of the 70,000 bitcoin, then worth roughly ₤305 million ($410 million), that she had taken upon fleeing China. Qian also tried to purchase a villa in Tuscany and high-end London properties to launder the proceeds of her fraud, but it was a 2018 attempt to buy a house that put her on the radar of British police, prosecutors said.
Qian had denied allegations of fraud in China, where authorities say around 128,000 people fell victim to a 40 billion renminbi ($5.62bn) investment scheme between 2014 and 2017. But she changed her pleas to guilty in September, on what would have been the first day of her trial, admitting that she had laundered the proceeds of a mammoth fraud, setting up a battle over the billions of bitcoin that remain.
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