In a story that reads almost like a modern crime thriller, a 47-year-old Chinese national who went by the aliases Yadi Zhang and Qian Zhimin is at the center of one of the world’s largest cryptocurrency frauds and money laundering cases. Her scheme, which spanned continents and preyed on tens of thousands of unsuspecting victims, is now culminating in a high-profile sentencing in London, with repercussions still rippling through the financial and legal worlds.
According to the BBC and AFP, Qian orchestrated a vast Ponzi scheme in China between 2014 and 2017, luring over 128,000 victims—many of them pensioners and middle-aged investors—with promises of high returns from a company called Lantian Gerui, or Bluesky Greet in English. The company claimed to be developing cutting-edge health products and mining cryptocurrency, but in reality, it was simply funneling new investors’ money to pay off earlier participants, a classic pyramid scam. The total amount defrauded exceeded 40 billion yuan (about $5.6 billion or £4.2 billion), as confirmed by the UK’s Crown Prosecution Service.
Qian’s manipulation was as elaborate as it was effective. She communicated with her clients primarily through poems posted on her blog, often extolling social responsibility and patriotism. “We must love the elderly with the infatuation of a first romance,” read one such poem, according to the BBC. The company organized lavish banquets, mass holidays, and public presentations, even claiming endorsements from prominent figures like the son-in-law of Chairman Mao. The trust this generated was, for many, irresistible. One investor, Mr. Yu, told the BBC, “They just pumped up our dreams… until we lost all self-control, all critical judgment.”
Investors were encouraged to reinvest their daily payouts and to recruit others, fueling the scheme’s growth. Many, like Mr. Yu and his wife, took out loans at interest rates as high as 8% to invest more, believing promises of a 200% profit over two and a half years. The scam’s reach was staggering, touching people in every province of China. “Our patriotism was our Achilles’ heel, that’s what they exploited,” Mr. Yu reflected.
But behind the scenes, the company’s operations were anything but transparent. Qian was notoriously secretive, known to clients only as Huahua or Little Flower, and reserved personal appearances for the biggest investors—those who put in at least 6 million yuan (about $842,000 or £628,000). Mr. Li, one such investor, recalled, “We all saw her as our Goddess of Wealth. She started encouraging us to dream big… that within three years, she’d give us enough wealth to last our families three generations.”
The illusion began to unravel in mid-2017 when Chinese police launched an investigation into Lantian Gerui. Payouts abruptly stopped, and company managers urged investors not to go to the authorities, blaming temporary checks. In reality, Qian had already begun to cover her tracks. She paid off senior managers to keep them quiet and fled China in September 2017 using a fake passport. Her destination: London.
Once in the UK, Qian rented a mansion in Hampstead, north London, for more than £17,000 ($22,700) a month. To fund her lavish lifestyle and launder the proceeds, she converted much of the stolen money into Bitcoin, which she then attempted to transform into cash and property—including an attempted purchase of a £23-million ($30-million) mansion in Totteridge Common. She posed as a wealthy antiques and diamond heiress and hired a former takeaway worker, Jian Wen, as her personal assistant, instructing her to trade cryptocurrency for other assets.
Qian’s ambitions didn’t stop at property. According to diary entries cited by the BBC, she was plotting to found an international bank, buy a Swedish castle, and even become “queen” of Liberland, an unrecognized microstate on the Croatian-Serbian border, by 2022. But her extravagant plans drew attention. When Wen was unable to explain the source of Qian’s wealth during a property purchase, police began to investigate.
The unraveling came in April 2024. Metropolitan Police raided Qian’s Hampstead mansion, uncovering hard drives and laptops holding tens of thousands of Bitcoins. The seizure—over 61,000 Bitcoins, worth more than $6 billion at current rates—was the largest in UK history. Police surveillance of Qian’s Malaysian accomplice, Seng Hok Ling, had led to the bust, with cash, gold, and cryptocurrencies totaling £11 million also confiscated.
Qian was arrested in York, where police also found four people illegally employed as her domestic staff. At first, she denied all charges, claiming persecution by the Chinese government, but in September 2025 she pleaded guilty at London’s Southwark Crown Court to acquiring and possessing criminal property. She now faces up to 14 years in prison, with sentencing underway. Her assistant, Jian Wen, was sentenced last year to six years and eight months for her role, while Seng Hok Ling has also admitted to money laundering and is awaiting sentencing.
The human cost of the fraud is immense. According to William Glover of Fieldfisher, “possibly the largest legal case of its kind in terms of value involving an individual and not a corporate,” many victims lost their life savings, marriages, and even access to basic necessities. One investor, known to Mr. Yu, died of breast cancer after being unable to afford treatment. “She was at death’s door, and she knew I could write, so she asked me to write her an elegy if the worst came to the worst,” Mr. Yu remembered. His poem ends, “Let us be pillars, holding up the sky / Rather than sheep, to be led and misled / To those who survive – strive harder / That we might right this grave injustice.”
The fate of the seized Bitcoin—now worth over twenty times what it was when Qian arrived in the UK—is the subject of ongoing civil proceedings in London’s High Court. About 1,300 alleged victims have come forward, but thousands more are expected to stake claims. The process is complicated by the need for claimants to prove their losses, especially as many paid local promoters rather than Qian’s company directly. The Crown Prosecution Service is considering a compensation scheme for those without legal representation, but as of now, details remain unclear. Any unclaimed funds would typically revert to the UK government, though the Treasury has not commented on its intentions.
The story of Qian Zhimin, the so-called Cryptoqueen, serves as both a cautionary tale about the perils of unchecked financial ambition and a sobering reminder of the very real human suffering caused by white-collar crime. As the legal process grinds on, those affected are left hoping that justice—and perhaps some restitution—will finally be served.
