Jian Wen, 42, is charged with being the “front person” who assisted Zhimin Qian, a fugitive fraudster, in hiding money obtained from a £5 billion investment scam.
According to the allegations, Jian Wen, 42, served as a “front person” to assist in the money laundering of a £5 billion investment scam that Zhimin Qian conducted in China between 2014 and 2017.
A jury was informed that before traveling to the UK under the fictitious name Yadi Zhang on a passport issued by St. Kitts and Nevis, Qian purchased cryptocurrencies in order to export the money.
After police searched the six-bedroom home they rented for more than £17,000 a month in Hampstead Heath in northwest London, as well as a safety deposit box, she left the country and is currently at large.
When police acquired access to devices carrying digital wallets storing over 61,000 Bitcoin in the summer of 2021, the gadgets were valued at over £1.4 billion.
Wen is on trial at Southwark Crown Court, where she is denying three counts of money laundering between October 2017 and January 2022. She is not considered to have been a part of the underlying scam or to have had access to all of the Bitcoin.
Wen doesn’t deny handling the Bitcoin, according to prosecutor Gillian Jones KC, but she says she was Zhang’s caregiver; the jury will have to determine whether or not she knew it was the profits of crime.
