A Chinese woman, described as a “supervillain” who orchestrated a billion-dollar investment fraud to buy Bitcoin, was sentenced to 11 years and 8 months in prison by a judge in London.
Zhimin Qian, who escaped from prison in China after fleeing to the border with Myanmar on a motorbike, traveled through Southeast Asia and Europe using fake passports before settling in Britain under a false name — Yadi Zhang. She was arrested as part of the largest Bitcoin seizure ever carried out by British police — now valued at $6.4 billion.
Qian was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday after pleading guilty to charges of possession and transaction of criminal property in August. His assistant, Seng Hok Ling, 47, was also sentenced to 4 years and 11 months in prison for his role in handling criminal money.
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At age 47, Qian lived a life of luxury, renting expensive mansions and plotting to become the monarch of a self-proclaimed nation called “Liberland” until she was arrested last year, prosecutors said.
Zhang was a key player in a fraud that helped generate much of that illicit money, while Ling helped transfer the money to cryptocurrency accounts, according to prosecutors. Ling was not involved in the Chinese fraud and had no knowledge of Qian’s scheme, his lawyer said in court.
“The scale of money laundering is unprecedented,” Judge Sally-Ann Hales said in handing down the sentence. “You lied and schemed the whole time to benefit yourself.”
The seizure of 61,000 Bitcoins in 2018 during a money laundering investigation was the largest ever by British police into cryptocurrencies. Now, a UK government agency seeks to return Bitcoins to injured investors.
Qian was behind an unlicensed Chinese investment company that raised 40 billion renminbi ($5.6 billion) from about 128,000 investors in China between 2014 and 2017, prosecutors said in the London court before the sentencing.
Qian “accepts his conviction and the mistakes that led to it,” said Roger Sahota, his lawyer, after the sentencing. “She never intended to commit fraud, but acknowledges that her investment schemes were fraudulent and deceived those who trusted her.”
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When Chinese authorities raided an event organized by the company in 2017, Qian fled and traveled to London via Southeast Asian countries using a fake St. Kitts and Nevis passport, according to prosecutors.
In the UK, she hired Jian Wen, a fast-food worker, who was sentenced last year to more than six years in prison for helping her launder money. Qian used Wen and Ling to rent expensive homes, buy jewelry and properties in Dubai and spend tens of thousands of pounds on luxury purchases, prosecutors said.
A city law firm has alerted police to an attempt to buy properties in London using suspicious Bitcoins. The police then seized the 61,000 Bitcoins and Wen was later arrested. Qian, however, remained at large, living in luxurious mansions in Scotland and York, prosecutors said.
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Wen was still facing trial in February 2024, when a transfer of 8.2 Bitcoins to a police-monitored cryptocurrency wallet led to Qian’s arrest at his York mansion.
There, police found several digital devices with wallets containing crypto assets worth more than £60 million ($79 million) and around £48,000 in cash, as well as jewellery, scattered throughout the house.
She wanted to buy a big house and sell £200,000 worth of Bitcoins a month to pay her expenses and become “the monarch of Liberland”, prosecutors alleged. Liberland is an unowned strip of land between Croatia and Serbia, on the western bank of the Danube River.
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After his arrest, Qian refused to answer most of the police’s questions but said he “felt like he was going to die soon and that it was his last chance to spend,” prosecutors said.
© 2025 Bloomberg L.P.
