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.
More than 100,000 Chinese people invested their money in her company - which claimed to be developing high-tech health products and mining cryptocurrency. In reality, she embezzled the funds, police say.
Investors have told the BBC World Service they hope to get at least some of their cash back from the UK authorities. Anything left unclaimed would normally default to the UK government - leading some to speculate that the Treasury could stand to gain from the haul.
If we can gather all the evidence together, we hope the UK government, the Crown Prosecution Service and the High Court can show compassion, said one victim we are calling Mr Yu, who says his marriage failed as a result of the fraud. Because now, it's only that haul of Bitcoin [cryptocurrency] that can return us a little bit of what we lost.
Qian Zhimin, 47, arrived in the UK under a fake passport in September 2017, after Chinese police started investigating her.
She moved into a mansion on the edge of Hampstead Heath, at a rent of more than £17,000 ($22,700) a month. To pay for this, she needed to convert her Bitcoin stash back into money she could spend.
So she posed as a wealthy antiques and diamond heiress and hired a former takeaway worker as her personal assistant, who she asked to trade the cryptocurrency into other assets, such as cash and property.
As Bitcoin rocketed in value, Qian could achieve what her company promised its investors - that they could get rich while lying down. Her assistant, Wen Jian, at her own trial last year, which culminated in a six-year jail term for money laundering, said Qian had spent most of her days lying in bed, gaming and online shopping.
But Qian was also drawing up a bold six-year plan for future schemes, according to her diary. Her notes outline plans to found an international bank and even to ingratiate herself with a British duke.
A Chinese police investigation into Lantian Gerui, her company, signaled the beginning of the end for Qian's scheme. A former company employee testified it was new investors' money funding the daily payouts, not crypto-mining dividends. Mr Yu, one of her investors, expressed his shock and sorrow over the losses, which bankrupted many and even caused personal tragedies.
After a significant raid, police seized a vast amount of cryptocurrency from her property, marking a pivotal moment in the investigation. Now, as thousands of investors prepare to claim compensation, the future of the seized Bitcoin remains uncertain.
