UK Woman Found Guilty of Laundering $2.5B in Bitcoin
A British woman has been found guilty and convicted on Wednesday for laundering over $2.5 billion (£2 billion) worth of bitcoin for a Chinese fugitive.
Jian Wen, a 42 year old British citizen has been found guilty for money laundering on behalf of a Chinese woman called Yadi Zhang.
The jury found Wen guilty on one count of money laundering and couldn’t reach a decision on two other charges. In an announcement, the Crown Prosecution Service said the sheer scale of the seized Bitcoin, the lack of any legitimate evidence for how it was acquired and its connection to a massive investment fraud in China, all indicated that it was criminal property.
The proceeds from Bitcoin were used by Wen to purchase a multi-million pound house in an affluent part of North London, in the UK. Police seized Bitcoin from Wen in a 2018 raid in the UK.
“Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are increasingly being used by organized criminals to disguise and transfer assets, so that fraudsters may enjoy the benefits of their criminal conduct,” said Andrew Penhale, Chief Crown Prosecutor, in a statement.
“This case, involving the largest cryptocurrency seizure in the UK, illustrates the scale of criminal proceeds available to those fraudsters,” adds Penhale.
Wen played a huge role in converting significant amounts of the Bitcoin into cash and other expensive assets, on behalf of an international fraudster. She went from being a working class woman and living a modest lifestyle in Leeds, north of the UK. Then almost overnight her fortune changed significantly when she met the fellow Chinese national Zhang who was the source of the Bitcoin, said the CPS.
Throughout the course of the investigation Wen denied knowing that any of the Bitcoin had been derived
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