Within weeks of Zhang’s arrival in London in September 2017, Jianwen quit his job and his room in a Chinese takeaway and moved into a £5m six-bedroom house near Hampstead Heath .
The women, who claimed to run an international jewelery company trading diamonds and antiques in countries including Japan, Thailand and China, traveled the world and spent tens of thousands of pounds on designer clothes and shoes at Harrods.
In her newly affluent lifestyle, Wen bought a £25,000 E-Class Mercedes and sent her son to the £6,000-a-term Heathside prep school.
But alarm bells were set off when she tried to buy some of London’s most expensive properties, including a £23.5m seven-bedroom Hampstead mansion with a swimming pool, and a nearby £12.5m house with Cinema and gym in residence.
Wen’s declared income for the 2016/17 financial year was just £5,979 and he was unable to explain the source of this income. Bitcoin She would use it to pay for the property, and police first raided the woman’s home on October 31, 2018.
Jane faced trial at Southwark Crown Court. Image: CPS
But it took another two and a half years, after investigators discovered more than 61,000 bitcoins in digital wallets, to realize they had made the largest ever cryptocurrency seizure in the UK.
The cryptocurrency was worth £1.4bn at the time but has now risen to over £3bn, while 23,308 bitcoins linked to the investigation are still in circulation and are currently worth over £1bn.
£5bn investment fraud
The court heard the bitcoins came from a £5bn investment scam run in China by Zhang, 45, who arrived in the UK between 2014 and 2017 on a false St Kitts and Nevis passport and defrauded him in a fraudulent wealth scheme nearly 130,000 Chinese investors.
Wen has not been accused of engaging in potential fraud.
Zhang, also known as Qian Zhimin (meaning “money” in Chinese), has fled the UK and her whereabouts are unknown.
Wan, 42, was found guilty of one count of money laundering between October 2017 and January 2022, after a trial at Southwark Crown Court where the jury failed to reach a verdict on two similar charges.
Prosecutors are not seeking a retrial and Moon will be sentenced on May 10.
The women rented a house in Hampstead for £17,000 a month. Image: CPS
She was acquitted of 10 other money laundering charges at a trial last year but was unable to report the charges out of fear that hackers could target companies holding seized cryptocurrencies if the numbers involved were made public.
A Class A prisoner, Wen, a small woman with large round glasses, was led in handcuffs to the witness stand, where two dock officers guarded the door as she testified.
She told jurors she grew up in a working-class family in China, where she met her husband Marcus Barraclough, before coming to the UK on a partner visa in 2007, when She is pregnant.
Wen Jiabao visits Lindt Chocolate Shop.Picture: Meet the police
Changes in Wen’s lifestyle
The relationship broke down after their son was born and she lived a modest life in Leeds, where she gained a law diploma and a BA in economics before moving to London in the summer of 2017.
She had opened cryptocurrency accounts and took meticulous notes in her “Wallace and Gromit” notebook, but said she had “no idea” she would soon be dealing with Bitcoin on such a “large scale.”
She applied for dozens of jobs while working at a Chinese takeaway in Abbey Wood, south-east London, where she lived in a room below the restaurant.
Wen said she saw an ad for a “housekeeper” on the Chinese social media app WeChat and first met Zhang at the five-star Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington. She later described her role on her resume as “live-in personal assistant to high net worth individuals.”
The women quickly moved into a £17,000-a-month house in Hampstead, after paying a £40,000 deposit and six months’ rent in advance.
Ms Wen traveled to Thailand and Dubai, the women traveled across Europe, while Ms Zhang, whose aliases include Rose, Emma and Huahua, avoided countries with which China has extradition agreements.
Wynn tried to buy the property in Hampstead.Picture: Meet the police
Hampstead mansions and Tuscan villas
They sold Bitcoin and bought fine jewellery, with receipts worth £25,600 and £18,750 found at Christopher Walser Vintage Diamonds in Zurich and two watches worth around £49,300 and £69,900 at Van Cleef & Arpels in Switzerland.
In the three months to the end of 2017, Ms Wen spent more than £90,000 on designer women’s clothing, jewelery and shoes at Harrods using a rewards card in her name, despite telling jurors: “I’m a handbag people. ”
Winn bought two apartments in Dubai for more than £500,000 and is considering buying an 18th-century Tuscan villa with sea views worth £10 million.
Wen Jiabao is visiting Germany.Picture: Meet the police
Bundles of cash found during police raids. Image: CPS
But efforts to buy multi-million pound properties in London triggered anti-money laundering checks, but none of the purchases went ahead because the origin of the bitcoins could not be explained.
Wen initially claimed the cryptocurrency had been mined, then said it was given to her as a “love gift” and drafted a gift deed saying Ms Zhang had received 3,000 bitcoins, then worth £15m.
Prosecutors said Wen served as a “front” to help conceal the origins of the stolen funds, which were used to buy cryptocurrency to move proceeds out of China.
“I was lied to”
Gillian Jones KC said when Zhang arrived in London she needed to exchange the bitcoins back for cash or “property, jewelery or other items of high value”.
Wen admitted she was involved in an arrangement to handle some of the cryptocurrency but said she did not know or suspect it was proceeds of crime and claimed she was “cheated” by the woman she called her boss.
“We were close … but looking back now, I was seriously taken advantage of,” she said. “I don’t know where she is.”
The police said they are still actively searching for Zhang.
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