Qian Zhimin, dubbed the ‘Chinese Crypto Queen’, has been sentenced to 11 years and eight months in prison in Britain for laundering billions she stole from Chinese pensioners and funneled them into Bitcoin.
Judge Sally-Ann Hales told Southwark Crown Court that Qian had masterminded the plan ‘from inception to conclusion’, calling her motive ‘one of pure greed’.
The 44-year-old raised more than £4.2 billion from more than 120,000 investors and claimed her company developed health technology and mined crypto coins, which front police say was covering up a massive fraud. The stock is now worth around £5 billion.
Zhimin fled China in 2017 as police began investigating and booked a £17,000 settlement ($22,700)-a monthly home in Hampstead Heath under a false identity. A subsequent police raid uncovered tens of thousands of Bitcoins in what is believed to be the UK’s largest crypto seizure.
“The more information we got about her involvement… that she was actually the ringleader of the fraud, and not just a lower-level member… it became clear that she is indeed very smart, very excitable, very manipulative, and able to convince a lot of people,” said Detective Inspector Joe Ryan of the Metropolitan Police Service.
Zhimin fled to Britain after Chinese police launched an investigation
Qian fled to Britain with a fake passport. She posed as a wealthy heiress of antiques and diamonds when she wanted to rent the Hampstead Heath mansion. She then hired a former takeout worker named Wen Jian as her personal assistant, whom she would ask to trade crypto for other assets such as cash and property.
The house Zhimin had rented in Hampstead Heath (Source: Metropolitan Police)
During a search for assets that could be purchased with the stolen Bitcoin, Zhimin came onto the authorities’ radar. It was an attempted purchase of a large property in Totteridge Common that was flagged when Jian failed to account for her boss’s wealth.
That led to a police investigation and a raid on Qian’s property in Hampstead. It led to what is believed to be the largest crypto seizure in Britain’s history, with police finding hard drives and laptops storing tens of thousands of Bitcoins.
At that point, authorities concluded that Zhimin was the mastermind behind the scam.
Zhimin promised victims that they would become rich while lying down
Qian had told her investors that they could “get rich by lying down.
According to her assistant, who appeared at her own trial last year and was sentenced to six years for money laundering, Qian had spent most of her days in bed, shopping online and gaming.
Crypto queen BUSTED: Chinese fraudster Zhimin Qian sentenced to 11+ years after Britain seized £5 billion+ worth of Bitcoin.
She had a hidden treasure map in her wallet. pic.twitter.com/77qkgG8ukU
— ₿ ♛ (@BaylenLatona) November 11, 2025
Still, she had drawn up a six-year plan for her next misfortunes, with her diary entries detailing plans to establish a national bank, buy a Swedish castle, and even ingratiate herself with a British duke.
To top it all off, Qian wanted to become the queen of Liberland, an unrecognized microstate on the Croatian-Serbian border, in 2020.
Victims are still hoping for some money back
Victims of her scheme have said they hope to get at least some of their money back from British authorities.
“If we can gather all the evidence, we hope that the British government, the Crown Prosecution Service and the Supreme Court can show compassion,” a victim named Yu told the BBC. “Because now it’s only that amount of Bitcoin [cryptocurrency] That can give us back a little bit of what we lost.”
Yu and his wife had initially invested 60,000 yuan (£6,295) each after being told they would receive a 200% profit over 2.5 years.
Qian gave the investors some returns in the early days to convince them that the project was legitimate, prompting Yu and his wife to take out loans to invest even more in her fraudulent schemes.
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