Cryptocurrency Queen Arrested in Britain
11-Year Prison Sentence for "Bitcoin Queen"
Chinese businesswoman Chimin Qian, 47, faces an 11-year and 8-month prison sentence for her involvement in a fraud scheme that stole 61,000 Bitcoins worth $7.3 billion, according to a report by the tech website Bleeping Computer.
This sentence comes after a seven-year investigation that began with her arrest in 2017. The investigation confirmed her leadership of the fraud group that defrauded more than 128,000 victims in China.
Seng Huk Ling, 47, of Matlock, Derbyshire, was also sentenced to four years and 11 months in prison for his role in the scheme and his involvement in laundering the stolen funds.
Chimin Qian, a 47-year-old Chinese businesswoman, was sentenced to prison, according to Bleeping Computer.
This sentence came after a seven-year investigation that began in 2017. The investigation revealed that she was the mastermind behind a gang that defrauded more than 128,000 people in China.
Furthermore, they also arrested Seng Huk Ling, a 47-year-old man from Matlock, Derbyshire. He was sentenced to four years and eleven months for his involvement in the scheme and for helping launder the stolen money.
The Chinese woman pictured was sentenced today in London to eleven years in prison after defrauding approximately 130,000 people!
This woman is named Qimin Qian, a 47-year-old Chinese national. She was a simple housewife, spending her time between the kitchen and living room, until 2014 when she decided to become independent and establish her own company in China called Lantian Jerwei. The company advertised that it sold technology products and mined cryptocurrencies, but in reality, it wasn't selling anything at all.
In fact, the company was a front for a classic pyramid scheme: one person would recruit two, and those two would recruit two more, and the more people you recruited, the higher your profits. A massive advertising campaign, embellished with patriotic slogans about Chinese national unity and support for the government, made people believe it.
Qian didn't identify herself publicly; she used the alias Hua Hua. Between 2014 and 2017, she organized huge events and parties, including one at the Great Hall of the People, and collected vast sums of money from approximately 130,000 people. She distributed small profits to make things appear legitimate, until the Chinese police became suspicious. At that point, she converted all the money into Bitcoin, bought a fake passport, and left China permanently.
She traveled to Myanmar, then Thailand, Laos, and Malaysia, and from there boarded a plane to London, carrying hard drives containing 61,000 Bitcoins, equivalent to approximately $5.5 billion. There, she decided to live a life of luxury, staying in the most luxurious hotels and renting out mansions, claiming to be the heir to a family heirloom of jewelry and antiques. She partnered with someone who sold Bitcoin, bought jewelry, and then resold it to finance her extravagant lifestyle.
She rented a mansion in London's Hampstead area for $22,000 a month, and in 2018, she attempted to purchase a $12.5 million mansion in an upscale neighborhood. However, the exorbitant price tag raised suspicions, and British police began monitoring her.
Her next plan was even more bizarre: she tried to cultivate a relationship with the British royal family, establish her own bank in Liberland (a small territory between Croatia and Serbia), and even purchase a castle in Sweden to become its "queen"! However, authorities arrested her last year, only to discover she was the same Chinese fraudster Beijing had been searching for for years.
Today, she was sentenced to eleven years in prison, and her accomplice to four. The approximately 130,000 victims drivers, housewives, and pensioners lost their life savings, and their lives were devastated by the scam.
Britain now faces a major dilemma: how to return the money to the victims, especially since many of them didn't transfer funds directly to the company, but rather through intermediaries without any official documentation. As a result, most of the money will likely end up in the British treasury.
So, this seemingly "nice and unassuming" woman, who might even be a relative, is actually the mastermind behind the largest cryptocurrency fraud in history.
Indeed, the saying "women's cunning is great" rings true!