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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
World
Iram Ramzan

The Chinese 'Bitcoin queen', the £5.5bn stash and the five year police chase. Inside London’s crypto wars

Crypto Zhimin Qian Bitcoin Ruja Ignatova Police Cryptocurrency Jian Wen Joe Biden John Woeltz Kidnapping

In a London courtroom in September, wearing a brown cardigan and animal print top, 47-year old Zhimin Qian, aka “BitQueen”, pleaded guilty to her role in one of the biggest cryptocurrency frauds in history. Qian, also known as Yadi Zhang, fled China in 2017 after ripping off 128,000 investors and converting their cash into bitcoin.

At the time, the haul was worth £1.4bn. Today, its value has soared past £5.5bn. Qian has now been sentenced to 11 years and eight months in prison, and now begins a long battle in the High Court over who is entitled to the fortune - the UK government or the thousands of Chinese victims.

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