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A British-Chinese woman has been sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for laundering bitcoin derived from a £5bn fraud in China committed by her employer, London’s Southwark Crown Court heard on Friday.
Jian Wen, 42, was convicted in March of one count of money laundering on behalf of a Chinese woman, Yadi Zhang, her former boss.
During a raid on Wen and Zhang’s Hampstead mansion in 2018 London’s Metropolitan Police seized devices containing 61,000 bitcoin, currently worth more than £3bn.
It was one of the biggest crypto hauls by a law enforcement agency anywhere in the world. The Met had initially investigated Wen in relation to an attempted purchase of a London mansion with the bitcoin.
Her then-boss stole the funds in a £5bn fraud in China, according to UK prosecutors. Zhang’s lawyer has said she is “wholly innocent”.
Wen was convicted of laundering some of the proceeds between 2017 and 2022 after two trials and acquittals on 10 other counts. She was not accused of involvement in the original alleged fraud.
Judge Sally-Ann Hales, KC, said: “I am in no doubt that . . . you knew, rather than merely suspected, that you were dealing in the proceeds of crime.”
“This was an offence which was sophisticated and involved significant planning,” she added.
Wen, who was accused of helping to convert some of the bitcoin into cash, jewellery and other luxury items, as well as property, pleaded not guilty and consistently denied that she knew her employer’s funds were stolen.
“Miss Wen was a fragile and desperate woman” who was “undoubtedly duped and used”, Mark Harries KC, her lawyer, told the court. The court heard that Wen had not seen her 16-year-old son in 26 months. She has been in custody since March 2022.
“I do not agree with your counsel’s categorisation of you as a victim,” the judge said.
Wen has admitted that she was in control of a bitcoin wallet but claimed that she was unaware of the cryptocurrency’s source.
Gillian Jones KC, acting on behalf of the Crown Prosecution Service, said Wen’s transactions were “set against a background of warning that Miss Wen was given as to the source of the bitcoin”.
Between 2017 and 2020, Wen turned to a series of middlemen to convert the cryptocurrency into other assets, including Dubai-based estate agent Michael James Burke who helped her sell bitcoin through his companies in the Seychelles and in Switzerland, and purchase properties in Dubai.
The Met is currently working through a civil recovery process to forfeit the total seized funds and is in communication with Chinese authorities.
“The Chinese side has already engaged in international law enforcement co-operation with the UK concerning this case,” the Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs told the Financial Times.
It added: “Law enforcement agencies from both countries are actively advancing the work related to chasing fugitives and recovering assets.”
The co-operation comes after a group representing victims of the alleged £5bn scam in China submitted a letter last month to the foreign ministry in Beijing asking it to launch negotiations with the UK government for recovery of bitcoin bought with their money.
