(Bloomberg) -- “Fxxx u. The person who said ‘you’re poor’: Watch me how I grow millions!!!” 

The defiant diary entry was scribbled on flowery stationery by Jian Wen, a former fast food worker who would later have £1.7 billion ($2.2 billion) in stolen Bitcoin seized from the home she shared with a shadowy Chinese fugitive.

The note is just one of thousands of pieces of evidence UK prosecutors used to try and prove that Wen intended to make millions from her role in laundering a cryptocurrency stash the likes of which has never before been seized in Britain. 

Wen went from living in the basement of the east London Chinese take-out shop where she was employed, to a six-bedroom mansion in a leafy suburb, spending thousands on luxury shopping sprees at Harrods. This extreme lifestyle change coincided with her close relationship with the fugitive — her housemate and boss Yadi Zhang — who had allegedly hired her as a live-in carer. 

But Zhang was in fact a wanted criminal living under a false identity, who had allegedly orchestrated a $5.6 billion Bitcoin investment fraud in China. Police alleged that Wen’s real job was to launder the stolen Bitcoin. Wen said she was hoodwinked.

The 42-year-old — who has British citizenship — was found guilty this week of one count of money laundering by a jury, after a nearly two-month trial at London’s Southwark Crown Court. It was the biggest cryptocurrency money-laundering case ever prosecuted in the UK. The jury couldn’t reach a decision on two other charges. 

Wen was accused of dealing with three different cryptocurrency wallets between October 2017 and January 2022 to facilitate the use of criminal property controlled by Zhang – who was known in China as Zhimin Qian. A previous trial, which couldn’t be reported on until now, acquitted Wen on several other offenses of money laundering. 

“The case demonstrates that if enforcement agencies are going to succeed in going after enablers and launders across the world, we will need international cooperation,” said Patrick Rappo, a partner at law firm Reed Smith. “Although Jian Wen has been found guilty, there is still a risk that this is something of a Pyrrhic victory if the assets in question can’t be recovered and returned to the original investors.”

Jason Prins from the Metropolitan Police, whose team led the investigation, said the case demonstrates that it will leave no stone unturned in the pursuit of criminals who look to enjoy the proceeds of illicit funds.

This article was compiled using court proceedings, legal filings, testimony and witness statements. Qian went on the run before charges could be made against her and her whereabouts are unknown.

Manor House 

Chinese police started investigating a suspected fraudulent investment project in Tianjin, China, in 2017 that had swindled over 128,000 people across the country, UK prosecutors said at the trial. The investigation uncovered a fraud involving a company called Tianjin Lantian that lured investors with the promise of high returns. Unsuspecting investors had a total of 40 billion yuan ($5.6 billion) stolen and 14 Chinese nationals have since been convicted in connection with the crime.

At around the same time in the UK, Wen had recently moved to London from Leeds and been through the harrowing experience of having to flee her basement flat after the owner tried to abuse her, the jury was told. Looking for a way out, Wen called up a phone number featured in an advertisement on WeChat, a Chinese social media app, for a Chinese speaking housekeeper and butler in London. The phone call changed her life.

The ad was posted by Qian, who had fled China in the midst of the police’s fraud investigation, entering the UK using a fake identity backed by a Saint Kitts and Nevis passport. 

Wen told the court she first met Qian in the coffee shop of a luxury London hotel where Qian was living, and that she was hired for a weekly salary of £500. She claims she believed Qian had made her Bitcoin millions through legitimate mining efforts. But police say in order to have mined that amount of Bitcoin legitimately would have taken as much electricity as is needed to power 25,000 households for a year.

Within days of being recruited, Wen was helping Qian rent a six-bedroom Manor House at £17,000 a month. While Qian settled in, large cash deposits were made into Wen’s accounts to meet expenses. Prosecutors said that Qian’s main job was turning the Bitcoin into tangible assets and currency to make the most of the loot. Thousands of pounds were spent on designer clothes from the likes of Valentino and Chanel and Faberge luxury jewelry. Before long, Wen had 3,000 Bitcoin gifted to her, a Mercedes car and a flat in Dubai in her name. 

Dirty Money

Prosecutors described during the trial how a series of professional firms in London and Dubai advised the pair on changing the crypto into cash. Some of the firms asked for proof of the funds’ source and were allegedly provided with bogus justifications for the unexplained wealth. 

In one instance in 2020, the pair had planned to set up a technology consultancy firm to receive laundered illicit money via Dubai. Wen also dealt with professionals who helped her convert Bitcoin to cash, which she collected outside malls and pubs. Prosecutors said she had once told the person delivering the cash to park away from CCTV cameras. 

London has gained a reputation for being a safe haven for dirty money. Criminals see it as an attractive destination because of the ease with which they can use the city’s plethora of professionals including lawyers and accountants to clean money, obscure its origins and invest in assets. A 2022 report from anti-corruption organization Transparency International found that £6.7 billion in so-called questionable funds from across the world have been invested in UK property since 2016. 

Wen frequently burst into tears while giving evidence in court and claimed she just wanted to better her life. Qian “is the decision maker for every single action, every single moment,” Wen said, giving evidence. “You say I am the leader. I wish I was.”

On one trip in Europe, they traveled by road, avoiding countries that had an extradition treaty with China. Evidence showed Wen used a search engine to find out which countries had this pact. Photos recovered from the pair’s phones revealed they never appeared in photos together. One of the trips involved a shopping spree at high-end jewelers Van Cleef & Arpels, another at Christopher Walser Vintage Diamonds. 

Wen’s online history also showed searches that asked what the definition of money laundering was and how to buy a house in Bitcoin without showing where it came from.

“I was duped. I have a little bit of shame in saying that,” Wen said in court. 

Reclusive Fugitive

What eventually gave them away was suspicious activities in bank accounts, and lawyers who flagged their failure to show the source of money in attempts to buy houses worth millions of pounds. 

The police conducted two searches in 2018 and 2020. But Qian managed to escape during the first raid, when she remained in the bedroom of the house while Wen quickly deleted WhatsApp chats. During the second raid Wen said she didn’t know where Qian was — WhatsApp chats proved otherwise.

Qian fled the country two days before she was called for an interview with investigators in September 2020. All Wen was left with was a Gucci bag and the Mercedes car — both of which she later sold. 

During the trial Wen painted a picture of her fugitive boss as someone who was sickly, saying she was in bed 18 hours a day reading or playing computer games, and that there was no reason to suspect she was a criminal. 

But notes from one of Qian’s diaries reveal a character with big ambitions. She wrote that she wanted to contribute to the UK’s national debt and solve Britain’s water problems. She also dreamed of using her money to become the queen of Liberland — a dodgy micronation — and befriending the Dalai Lama. 

Behind these big dreams was someone with a knack for crypto — in the diary she correctly predicted that Bitcoin would be worth over $50,000 by 2021.

Wen will be sentenced by the London judge on May 10. A proceeds-of-crime hearing will take place in September, which is set to decide what to do with the seized Bitcoin. The Crown Prosecution Service, which is leading a civil recovery investigation, said it could result in the forfeiture of the seized Bitcoin regardless of convictions. 

The seizure of the “Bitcoin represents just under a 0.3% market share of all Bitcoin that will ever be in existence,” Amalia Neenan FitzGerald, a lawyer at Peters & Peters, said. “This verdict will likely put further pressure on crypto-centric businesses to tighten up their anti-money laundering protocols.”

(Updates with a comment from a lawyer in the final paragraph)

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