Cryptoqueen who fled China for London mansion jailed over [₿61,000] Bitcoin stash

A woman, said by police to have bought cryptocurrency now worth billions of pounds using funds stolen from thousands of Chinese pensioners, has been sentenced to 11 years and eight months for money laundering.

Passing sentence at Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday, Judge Sally-Ann Hales told Qian Zhimin she was "the architect of this offending from its inception to its conclusion... your motive was one of pure greed".

After fleeing China, Qian moved to a mansion in Hampstead, north London. The Metropolitan Police raided it a year later and made one of the world's single largest crypto seizures.

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Police raided Qian's Hampstead rental property and uncovered hard drives and laptops found to be loaded with tens of thousands of Bitcoin - believed to be the single largest cryptocurrency seizure in UK history.

Qian had set up the company through which money was embezzled just four years earlier, in her native China. Lantian Gerui, or Bluesky Greet in English, claimed to use investors' money to mine - or generate - new Bitcoin, and to invest in a range of pioneering technological devices.

But UK police believe this was an elaborate scam, and that Qian's company was simply using promises of high profits to pull more and more investors into the scheme.