London court set to decide the future of 61,000 Bitcoins

All eyes of the crypto world should be on London’s Southwark District Court at this moment. There is a trial ongoing against Ms. Zhimin Qian, a Chinese woman who committed fraud between 2014 and 2017, defrauding thousands of victims of their money. When police raided her villa in 2018, they also found access to several online crypto wallets. These contained approximately 61,000 Bitcoins, worth some €6 billion today.

The trial will thus determine what will happen to the largest Bitcoin theft ever.

Saint Kitts

Zhimin Qian, a 47-year-old Chinese citizen, also known as Yadi Zhang and on the Chinese internet as the “Bitcoin Queen,” orchestrated a large-scale fraud scheme in China between 2014 and 2017. Investigators traced approximately 61,000 Bitcoin to crypto wallets controlled by Qian. Authorities suspect the funds originated from fraudulent investment schemes that defrauded more than 128,000 people in China via a company called Tianjin Lantian Gerui Electronic Technology. Participants were promised exorbitant profits that, of course, never materialized.

Ms. Qian fled China in 2017 using a false Saint Kitts and Nevis passport and entered the United Kingdom. A year later, she attempted to launder some of the cryptocurrency by buying property with the help of Jian Wen, a Chinese grocery store clerk with whom she began a relationship. Wen was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison in May 2024 for her part in the scam already.

Qian appeared in a London court this week, assisted by a Mandarin interpreter, as her English is not very good. Her sentence will be announced at the end of the trial.

If the United Kingdom seizes the Bitcoins at the end of the trial, the country will immediately become one of the largest Bitcoin holders in the world.