Zhimin Qian, the mastermind behind a massive pyramid scheme that targeted over 128,000 victims in China, received a sentence of 11 years and eight months in prison for unprecedented money laundering. Her associate, Malaysian national Seng Hok Ling, was also sentenced to four years and 11 months. The scheme, which Qian’s lawyer acknowledged as fraudulent but claimed she “never set out to commit fraud,” had devastating effects.
One victim reported being forced to sell their house, and another shared that the resulting distress led to a divorce. The pure greed driving the operation, as stated by the sentencing judge, was evident in the scale of the crime, which had its roots in smaller schemes as early as 2012 before Qian launched the vast crypto investment platform, Blue Sky, which used glossy promotions to lure investors.Qian fled China in July 2017 after swindling an estimated 40 billion yuan (roughly £5.5 billion), converting most of the proceeds into Bitcoin. She entered the UK that autumn using a false St Kitts and Nevis passport under the alias “Yadi Zhang,” beginning nearly seven years on the run. During this time, she lived a lavish lifestyle, spending heavily on designer goods at Harrods, travelling across Europe, and even dreaming of meeting a duke or ruling a microstate.
Despite the opulence, the fear of Chinese authorities was constant, leading her to avoid countries with extradition treaties and forbid her domestic staff from using certain electronic devices, a measure enforced by hefty financial penalties.The international dragnet began to close in after Qian and her associates—Ling and former takeaway worker Jian Wen—attempted to liquidate the Bitcoin into assets, including trying to purchase a $\text{£}24$ million London property in 2018, which triggered a suspicious activity report. A subsequent police raid on their rental house yielded laptops and crypto wallets containing the massive Bitcoin cache. The police initially lost her trail for five years after she narrowly escaped capture days following the raid.
Throughout her time as a fugitive, she remained focused on spending and converting her crypto, once writing to Wen, “See you in jewellery street,” while her facilitator, Ling, nervously researched money-laundering sentences.The extended manhunt was reignited in February 2024 when detectives noticed a long-dormant Bitcoin wallet flicker to life. Police successfully tracked Qian for over a month, following her trail from a secluded bungalow in Scotland to a house outside Glasgow, and ultimately to a quiet Airbnb in suburban York. She was arrested there in late April alongside four illegally employed Malaysian nationals working as her domestic staff.
When apprehended, she was carrying over 60$ million across additional crypto wallets, along with false passports and cash. She subsequently pleaded guilty to fraud charges on the first day of her trial in September.
Qian was once referred to as “the world’s largest female BTC holder,” and the over 61,000 Bitcoin seized from her London home became the UK’s largest cryptocurrency seizure, valued at more than £5.5 billion at the time of her conviction and currently priced around £5.5 billion. This colossal amount is now the subject of civil proceedings to determine how much can be returned to the Chinese victims who lost their life savings. The Metropolitan police noted that while criminals exploit technological developments like cryptocurrency, every transaction leaves a trace, allowing law enforcement to combat organized crime groups who use digital assets to hide and invest the proceeds of serious criminal activity.
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