However, his case may be adjourned because of a potential misunderstanding over his previous guilty plea, the court was told.<\/p>\n
Dressed in a blouse with floral patterns and her greying hair in a bun, Qian remained impassive as London\u2019s Southwark Crown Court started the sentencing hearings in her case.<\/p>\n
Qian’s accomplice Seng Hok Ling also admitted to money laundering. Photo \/ Metropolitan Police, AFP<\/p>\n
On the run<\/p>\n
Following scrutiny from Chinese authorities, Qian \u2013 also known as Yadi Zhang \u2013 fled her home country in 2017 using false documents to enter Britain. The court heard that she evaded UK authorities for nearly six years.<\/p>\n
She travelled across Europe, staying in fancy hotels and buying expensive jewellery including two watches worth nearly \u00a3120,000 ($280,180), the court heard.<\/p>\n
With the help of an accomplice called Jian Wen, she rented a lavish London property for around \u00a317,000 a month and claimed to run a successful jewellery business.<\/p>\n
Qian first drew the attention of British authorities in 2018 when she attempted to buy a London property and suspicions were raised over her Bitcoin.<\/p>\n
Officers raided the rented London home, where they found laptops containing a Bitcoin fortune, but did not immediately grasp the scale of the fraud.<\/p>\n
Documents later revealed Qian\u2019s ambitions included a plan to become the monarch of \u201cLiberland\u201d, a self-declared micronation between Croatia and Serbia.<\/p>\n
Police surveillance of Qian\u2019s co-defendant Ling led to her arrest in the northern English city of York in April 2024. Wen was last year jailed for six years and eight months over her role in the scheme.<\/p>\n
\u2018Exploited\u2019<\/p>\n
Lawyer William Glover, who has represented victims in a civil legal action, told AFP it was \u201cpossibly the largest legal case of its kind in terms of value involving an individual and not a corporate\u201d.<\/p>\n
Some of his clients had suffered enormous personal losses that had affected their lives, marriages and families, he said.<\/p>\n
According to Jackson Ng, who is representing other investors, the defendant organised public events while claiming to have Government support.<\/p>\n
People who were not seasoned investors and were not \u201cgoing to check everything\u201d were duped, he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cVictims are often at times might not be financially sophisticated,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThese could be your farmers, butchers, taxis drivers, housewives who aren\u2019t going to check everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
The promised return on their investment stopped being paid out in 2017.<\/p>\n
Fuelled by growing interest, Bitcoin, which was trading at around $3600 at the end of 2018, is currently hovering at around $100,000.<\/p>\n
Details of a compensation scheme proposed by British authorities are still being thrashed out in London\u2019s High Court in civil proceedings.<\/p>\n
Around 1300 alleged victims have come forward, according to sources close to the case.<\/p>\n
– Agence France-Presse<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"However, his case may be adjourned because of a potential misunderstanding over his previous guilty plea, the court…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":129339,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[74,29893,4236,14801,138,4444,1349,2134,89520,6119,9881,89518,27501,8482,1334,1357,2190,206,89519,111,139,69,1118,205,1461,26257,1335,1865,1613,3912,1354,1530],"class_list":["post-129338","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-after","tag-authorities","tag-bitcoin","tag-british","tag-business","tag-chinese","tag-court","tag-crypto","tag-evaded","tag-faces","tag-facing","tag-goddess","tag-heard","tag-huge","tag-jail","tag-lived","tag-long","tag-luxury","tag-multibilliondollar","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-of","tag-role","tag-scam","tag-seizure","tag-term","tag-today","tag-uk","tag-wealth","tag-woman","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129338","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=129338"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/129338\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/129339"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=129338"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=129338"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=129338"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}