The underlying Chinese in the UK's largest Bitcoin money laundering case: billions of fraudulent proceeds and "life comeback"

Authors: Yu Wufei, Xu Jingjing, Sanlian Life Weekly

On March 18th, local time in the UK, 42-year-old British Chinese Jian Wen was found guilty of "participating in money laundering arrangements" by a UK court and could face up to 14 years in prison. Jian Wen's defense lawyer Mark Harries told this magazine that due to the judge's busy schedule, the UK court has postponed Jian Wen's final sentencing from May 10th to May 24th.

Jian Wen served the notorious Qian Zhimin, who had deceived over 120,000 Chinese investors. On April 24th, Qian Zhimin appeared in court in London. She was accused of obtaining, using, or holding cryptocurrency related to crimes from October 1, 2017, to April 23, 2024, in London and other parts of the UK, which originated from her massive economic fraud in China.

During the investigation of Jian and Qian, the UK police seized over 61,000 bitcoins, the largest amount of cryptocurrency ever seized in the UK (based on the exchange rate of 1 bitcoin to about £50,190 on May 10th, valued at approximately £3.06 billion).

As the "caretaker and translator" for Qian in the UK, Jian Wen was born into an ordinary Chinese family and came to the UK in 2007. She did various manual labor jobs and had long hoped to achieve upward mobility overseas through legitimate channels. Throughout the six-year investigation and two-year trial, one question remained: Did Jian Wen willingly become an accomplice to an international fraud suspect in order to change her fate in a foreign land, or was she manipulated into becoming a victim?

Encounter

In August 2017, a Chinese takeout shop in Abbey Wood, southeast London, welcomed a new employee. 36-year-old Jian Wen, who had moved from Leeds, was starting her tenth year of struggle in the UK.

Jian Wen herself (Photo | UK Police)

During these ten years, Jian Wen traveled around the UK. According to Sky News, in 2007, 26-year-old, petite Jian Wen, seven months pregnant, arrived in Halifax, a small rural town in central-northern England, with a spouse visa, accompanying her British husband whom she met in China.

Halifax, with a population of 80,000, is full of 19th-century Victorian buildings in the town center. In the eyes of the British, it represents an affordable quality of life and picturesque scenery. However, according to Jian Wen's account, life there was not happy. Her husband was controlling and abusive, and the two divorced in 2010, with her taking care of the child. That same year, she sent the child back to China and moved to Leeds, 30 kilometers away.

Leeds is the nearest major city to Halifax and has a larger Chinese community. Jian Wen immersed herself in the Chinese working circle, taking various manual labor jobs to make ends meet. According to the Crown Prosecution Service's "Opening Notes" submitted to the court, Jian Wen mostly worked part-time in Chinese takeout shops in Leeds, frequently moving residences. In just one year in 2011, she changed homes three times: an attic in a takeout shop, a room above a takeout shop, and sharing a room in a cheap apartment building with a colleague.

This hand-to-mouth, unsettled life was clearly not what Jian Wen had envisioned. Before meeting her ex-husband in China, she had obtained a law degree from a university in China and had bigger dreams. Jackson, a London real estate agent who hosted Jian Wen, remembered her saying she wanted to become a lawyer. Despite the hardships, Jian Wen did not give up on the possibility of upward mobility in Leeds. As reported by Sky News, she obtained a bachelor's degree in economics in Leeds and took some law courses.

Photo | Sky News Twitter

However, these efforts did not seem to reflect in her income. According to UK tax records, in 2015, Jian Wen was still working in a Chinese takeout shop, declaring an annual income of £12,800; in 2016, she switched to a trading company importing goods from China, but her reported income shrank to £5,979.

Perhaps driven by a desire for wealth, Jian Wen also dabbled in the booming Bitcoin market.From December 30, 2016, to May 26, 2017, the price of one Bitcoin in pounds surged from £788 to £1,639, more than doubling in value. Encouraged by this, at the end of May 2017, Jian Wen registered accounts on two Bitcoin trading platforms headquartered in the UK and Denmark.

Relocating to the affordable Abbey Wood, a London suburb, was another effort by Jian Wen. Li Ting, who had worked at a Chinese takeout shop in Abbey Wood, told this magazine that both the employees and the bosses at this Chinese takeout shop "come and go quickly, and generally no one knows each other." Everyone sees it as a stepping stone, using connections from fellow villagers, friends, London Chinese forums, and professional introduction WeChat groups to seek higher-paying and better-treatment job opportunities.

Like many other Chinese, Jian Wen was also part of a WeChat group connecting Chinese job seekers. According to her testimony in court, within a month of moving to London in August 2017, she applied for dozens of jobs. In mid-September 2017, Jian Wen saw an advertisement in the group looking for a Chinese assistant and called the number on the ad directly. The voice on the other end asked Jian Wen to interview with the employer at the five-star Royal Garden Hotel on London's main shopping street.

At the Royal Garden Hotel, Jian Wen met "Zhang Yadi" for the first time. "Zhang Yadi" held a passport from the Federation of Saint Kitts and Nevis in Central America and the Caribbean but had a Chinese face. Jian Wen testified in court that she found "Zhang Yadi" to have disabilities from a car accident, breathing heavily, but dressed in traditional Thai clothing, looking young with delicate skin. Zhang Yadi told her that she had a multinational jewelry business and wanted Jian Wen to be her "caretaker and translator," helping her buy new clothes, open a bank account, and find a place to live.

Jian Wen and her legal team later emphasized in court that she saw this as a good opportunity to change her fate. Indeed, bidding farewell to the Chinese takeout shop, Jian Wen entered another world in London.

Every month, "Zhang Yadi" paid Jian Wen £4,000 in cash. Less than three weeks after they met, they moved into a six-bedroom mansion in Hampstead, a wealthy area in north London, with a monthly rent of £17,300. Hampstead, adorned with ponds and greenery, not only has the highest number of millionaires in the UK and some of the most expensive houses but is also known for its artistic celebrity homes, restaurants, and cafes.

At the opulent and luxurious global top-tier department store Harrods, Jian Wen became a member and purchased several items of clothing, shoes, and jewelry from renowned designers between September and December 2017, worth over £92,500. After becoming a "caretaker," Jian Wen vented in her diary, "Fxxx u. The person who said ‘you’re poor’: Watch me how I grow millions!!!"

Beginning

According to UK prosecutors, just two or three days before meeting Jian Wen, Qian Zhimin entered London in September 2017 with a passport from Saint Kitts and Nevis. In the UK, the 1978-born Qian Zhimin transformed into "Zhang Yadi," born in Hubei, China in 1990, with short black hair and fair skin.

Photo | Sky News Twitter

In 2017, Chinese police uncovered the "Blue Sky Grid Case" in Tianjin. According to the Chinese police report, since its establishment in 2014, Blue Sky Grid has attracted over 120,000 investors with a total of 43 billion RMB under the slogan "Give Grid three years, and Grid will give you three lifetimes of wealth." After the Chinese police began investigating this illegal fundraising case, over ten people were convicted. Qian Zhimin became the main fugitive in the case.

According to court documents obtained by the Financial Times, Qian Zhimin's escape was aided by several individuals, including a Chinese citizen named "Zhang Yadi."In July 2017, Qian used Zhang to obtain a passport from Saint Kitts and Nevis. According to the official website of the Saint Kitts and Nevis government, by donating $150,000 to the country's "Sustainable Growth Fund" or investing in real estate, without the need for residency or visits, one can obtain the country's passport; holding the passport allows visa-free travel to 155 countries and regions, including the UK, Ireland, and Russia. A month later, Qian used the name Nan银 (pronounced Nan) to open a bank account in the UK and began to transfer funds.

In the name of Yin, she obtained a fake Myanmar passport and used multiple identities to escape the Chinese authorities by transferring to Laos.

During the trial, Wen Jian said that at that time, she had no idea about the true identity of the generous "Zhang Yadi". "Zhang Yadi" asked everyone to call her "Emma", "Rose", and "Huahua".And from 2014 to 2017, in the mouths of those who participated in the Blue Sky Grid Investment, "Huahua" was actually an alias for Qian Zhimin.

When entering the UK, "Zhang Yadi" was carrying a Lenovo laptop. The UK prosecutors stated that at that time, she had already converted most of the investors' funds into Bitcoin and stored them in multiple computers.

Image | ShutterStock

After settling in London, Qian Zhimin urgently needed to convert the Bitcoin in her hands into other valuable items. She also set her sights on luxury properties in prime locations in London. At that time, there were some headlines in the UK property market about people directly buying houses for investment with Bitcoin. Jackson, who had been doing real estate business in London's affluent areas for over 20 years, was one of them. He and some friends noticed that in 2017, more and more tech industry entrepreneurs and wealthy individuals were moving to London, so they wanted to attract their business. In early October of that year, they put a £24 million mansion on the market, stating that customers could only pay with Bitcoin.

At that time, European and American media were eager to report that this was London's first "Bitcoin property". "BBC, CNBC, Sky News, ITV (Independent Television of the UK), and other media stayed in front of our office for several days. But we knew that due to tax, land registration, and other practical issues, it was still too early to talk about buying houses with Bitcoin," Jackson recalled to this magazine. However, from a public relations perspective, their gimmick was very successful, and many wealthy individuals came to them after hearing about this, eventually becoming their clients.

Among the numerous inquiries Jackson received, one came from Wen Jian. The email mentioned that Wen Jian was a public relations officer for an international jewelry trading company. Her boss read the news about "Bitcoin property" and had enough Bitcoin to purchase real estate. After explaining that "directly using Bitcoin to buy a house is still not realistic," he began recommending some qualified institutions to Wen Jian that could exchange Bitcoin for pounds, and introduced several top British law firms that could verify the source of funds to Wen Jian.

In his over 20-year career, Jackson had encountered many potential buyers with "dirty money." However, at the beginning of their interaction, he didn't think Wen Jian and the jewelry company she represented were such people, but rather "high-quality clients."

This judgment based on experience was largely due to Wen Jian's honesty in all aspects. Jackson said that in order to make the transaction compliant, Wen Jian specially visited Jackson's office, during which they talked about her aspirations for the future. He remembered Wen Jian saying, "She and her ex-husband had some difficulties, her son was far away from her," "She had been working in a takeout shop not long ago, but never gave up on learning," "She hoped to become a lawyer in the future, and hoped her child could return to her side soon."

Still from "Stock Madness"

"She didn't hide anything, like an open book," Jackson said. "She even agreed to hire a top investigation company in the UK to prove that their company's Bitcoin was mined by themselves, and even suggested whether to find a top investigation company in the US. If you know that these Bitcoins were stolen, wouldn't that be equivalent to suicide?"

Over the next month, Jackson took Wen Jian to view houses in the wealthy area of northwest London three times, each time looking at around ten residences. Qian Zhimin also came twice. In Jackson's impression, Qian Zhimin was short and fat, moved slowly, looked "very polite, repeatedly saying 'thank you for all the arrangements'." But they couldn't communicate directly because Qian Zhimin didn't understand English, so everything had to be relayed through Wen Jian, and she "paid great attention to protecting privacy."

Wen Jian took good care of Qian Zhimin, who had mobility issues and language barriers. Every time they arrived at a residence, Wen Jian would help Qian Zhimin get in and out of the taxi, assist her in stepping over the front steps, and repeatedly ask in a gentle tone if she needed anything else. If Qian Zhimin didn't want to go upstairs, Wen Jian would go upstairs with Jackson to view and then report back to Qian Zhimin in detail.

Jackson remembered that Qian Zhimin was very fond of a three-story detached villa listed for £23.5 million. It was adjacent to a tree-lined avenue, resembling a castle, with eight bedrooms and an indoor swimming pool. On the ground floor of the house, Qian Zhimin also showed Jackson her "largest Bitcoin mining system spread across different countries globally." After expressing thanks through Wen Jian, Qian Zhimin also said, "Planning to invest £500 million in the UK. Hope this is just the beginning."

"Wen Jian wanted to do everything to the best of her ability—even compliance," Jackson recalled to this magazine. "She seemed unaware that her boss had other ideas, and I didn't realize it at the time. Like an employee who always says 'yes, yes, yes' to the boss, she was too easily manipulated."

Vortex

After smoothly viewing the houses, selling the houses hit a deadlock. Jackson recalled that during the subsequent identity verification and proof of the source of funds, "Wen Jian kept urging her boss, but her boss kept dragging his feet."

In January 2023, Wen Jian appeared in the dock for the first time, wearing a loose formal jacket, with oversized glasses almost covering her entire face. During the following five-week trial, she cried several times, saying she had not realized she was being manipulated. Wen Jian's defense lawyer, Mark Harris, once said in court that Wen Jian was "a nobody," "desperately trying to break free from her past life," and she might really have just trusted "Zhang Yadi." "The person who dragged her out of the kitchen and placed her in a £4 million house in Hampstead."

Qian Zhimin was indeed a savvy criminal who knew how to manipulate people. In 2014, shortly after the establishment of Blue Sky Grid, Qian Zhimin successfully persuaded employee Ren Jiangtao to become the company's sole shareholder and legal representative with high salaries and generous bonuses. This was also a crucial reason why Qian Zhimin was able to escape abroad after the case broke out.

Still from "Double Dragons in the Abyss: This Love is Justice"

However, despite this sudden and generous job offer, Wen Jian did have doubts. She once typed the keywords "Money laundering meaning" in the search engine's input box.In December 2017, she also asked an accountant friend whether she should help a "friend" transfer £2 million from Bitcoin transactions to a personal account. She said she was told that this could trigger an anti-money laundering investigation, so she didn't do it.

Despite her suspicions, the temptation of this job was irresistible to Wen Jian. Her life in London was getting better and better. In 2018, after living in the UK for 11 years, Wen Jian officially became a British citizen. Her son was also brought from the country to attend a private school with an annual tuition of £6,000. The mother and son were reunited.

Wen Jian's mansion (Image | UK Police)

In the first half of 2018, the price of Bitcoin against the pound soared. By May 2018, one Bitcoin could be exchanged for over £5,500, more than three times the value in May 2017. At the same time, the two also set their sights on more real estate. In addition to the £23.5 million mansion, Wen Jian also tried to help Qian Zhimin purchase two properties worth £4.5 million and £12.5 million respectively.

However, along with the rising prices, the difficulty of the "butler" job also increased, as in the process of converting Bitcoin into pounds, and then purchasing houses through verification, Wen and Qian faced numerous obstacles.

Nicholas Ryder, a professor of financial crime law at Cardiff University in the UK, who has served as an advisor to EU and UK government departments, told this magazine: "As a financial innovation, Bitcoin is more inclusive, benefiting more people without bank accounts; but its high level of anonymity also makes it a favorite of fraudsters and terrorists. Because theoretically, it makes it harder to detect real money launderers." However, increasingly advanced traceability technology and the UK tax authorities' statistics on everyone's income make it almost impossible to conduct large-scale Bitcoin exchanges in the UK without being noticed.

For this reason, in the first eight months of 2018, Wen Jian visited at least ten European countries, including Austria, the Czech Republic, and Switzerland. She purchased jewelry worth tens of thousands of pounds locally and exchanged small amounts of Bitcoin for local currency online and offline. Sometimes, Qian Zhimin would also follow, but the two hardly left any photos together. During their travels together, Wen Jian also searched for keywords on the search engine such as "China extradition treaty Sweden." In addition, Wen Jian also traveled back and forth to Thailand twice, each time.She will bring back a new laptop. In the subsequent investigation, the police found information related to Qian Zhimin's cryptocurrency wallet in the computer. Various signs indicate that she was not unaware of being involved in the matter.  The exchange of a small amount of Bitcoin was not enough to quickly raise the money needed to purchase three houses. During her travels, Wen Jian, through her diverse connections, met the principal of a problematic brokerage company. This institution has been certified by the Financial Conduct Authority in the UK, but the principal was willing to exchange Bitcoin for cash without asking too many questions and directly provide a source of funds report suitable for purchasing real estate. The principal converted the Bitcoin provided by Wen Jian into £850,000, which is about to be used as a house deposit. Wen Jian transferred £850,000 to a well-known law firm recommended by Jackson, and the fund verification process began. Two British professors specializing in real estate and economic crimes told the magazine that in every property purchase completed in the UK, the buyer and seller are not allowed to transfer money to each other but must do so through their respective lawyers, who then transfer money between the representing law firms to complete the transaction. Jackson said, "A client can say a lot, show a lot, but when it comes to the transaction, you must find a law firm and pass the firm's verification of identity and fund sources." Subsequently, Wen Jian's communication with the lawyer repeatedly showed hesitation and inconsistencies in her timeline. According to the prosecutor's investigation records, in April 2018, Wen Jian told the law firm that the money she used to pay part of the house price came from Bitcoin "given to her by Zhang Yadi after mining." She also prepared a notarized certificate for receiving 3,000 Bitcoins as a gift. However, the law firm was not satisfied with this explanation. In an email, the firm mentioned the newly enacted "Unexplained Wealth Order" in 2017. This means that UK authorities may inquire about the source of funds used to purchase specific assets. If unable to explain, the buyer may lose the asset completely and be subject to investigation. The original intention of this law was to combat the hiding of illicit funds by oligarchs from the Middle East and Central Asia, as well as terrorist organizations in London, to complement and strengthen the 2003 anti-money laundering regulations. Professor Laid told the magazine that research by multiple independent institutions shows that the UK has the best anti-money laundering legal framework in the world. The 2003 legal framework imposes passive criminal liability on relevant financial institutions for preventing money laundering crimes, while the "Unexplained Wealth Order" requires all banks, law firms, real estate agents, and other institutions in the UK to more actively understand their clients and their financial sources and report any potential risks. According to the prosecutor's report, when faced with questions from the law firm, Wen Jian said in July 2018 that "Zhang Yadi" could not provide the origin of the Bitcoin for security reasons. When pressed further, Wen Jian mentioned that if this was a requirement for purchasing a house, they would not continue. Subsequently, Wen Jian moved to the more loosely regulated Dubai, where she exchanged the Bitcoin for local currency and bought two properties. However, the £850,000 transfer still caught the attention of the Metropolitan Police's anti-money laundering detectives. According to the Financial Times, on October 31, 2018, after seizing this transfer, British police came to Wen Jian and Qian Zhimin's residence with a search warrant. Several hours later, the police seized multiple laptops, including the one Qian Zhimin brought when entering the UK. In addition to these items, confiscated items included several notebooks, £70,000 in cash, a pink USB drive containing various keys, and a handwritten note with a series of passwords. In August 2020, when the police returned to their residence for a second search, they had already terminated the lease, and Qian Zhimin had fled. According to police records, Wen Jian retained a £40,000 rental deposit and a Mercedes-Benz E-Class car. Later, Wen Jian told the court that she had not seen Qian Zhimin since August 25, 2020.  In May 2021, two and a half years after the initial search, the police arrested Wen Jian. Laid told the magazine that in the UK, due to the protection of personal privacy and the shortage of investigators, it is not uncommon for "white-collar crimes" to take years to investigate, arrest, and prosecute. Through the evidence seized, the police tracked and unlocked multiple Bitcoin wallets belonging to Qian Zhimin, containing a total of over 61,000 Bitcoins. Wen Jian was arrested in a two-bedroom apartment in South London. She has returned to work at a restaurant and lives with her son. In the apartment, the police found a handwritten note that read, "I'll be dead if they break the BTC code." --- This is a translation of the provided text.