LONDON: A London court jailed a woman for nearly seven years on Friday for converting bitcoin into cash and property to help hide the proceeds of a 5 billion pound ($6.4 billion) fraud.
Prosecutors said Wen Jian helped hide stolen money. Nearly 130,000 Chinese investors allegedly had money stolen from them through fraudulent schemes between 2014 and 2017.
Prosecutors did not allege that she was involved in the underlying fraud, which they said another woman masterminded.
A woman is sentenced to six years and eight months in jail for laundering massive amounts of Bitcoin linked to a $5.6 billion investment fraud in China https://t.co/ciRKaWWFc2
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As part of their investigation, British police seized wallets holding more than 61,000 bitcoin. This was one of the largest cryptocurrency seizures by law enforcement worldwide.
The 61,000 bitcoin was worth around 1.4 billion pounds when police gained access in 2021. It is now worth over 3 billion pounds.
Wen, 42, denied three counts of money laundering. She also said she did not have any knowledge of criminality linked to the bitcoin.
Jurors found her guilty of one count in March following a trial at Southwark Crown Court. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on two other counts.
The court sentenced Wen to six years and eight months in prison on Friday for the single count of money laundering of which a jury found her guilty..
Judge Sally-Ann Hales said there was no suggestion that Wen had any involvement in the underlying fraud. But she told Wen that she had “no doubt that you knew” she was dealing with criminal property.
Prosecutor Gillian Jones said at the start of the trial that the mastermind behind the underlying fraud arrived in Britain in 2017, shortly after Chinese authorities began to investigate.
She said others used Wen as the “front person”, helping to convert the stolen money into bitcoin to take it out of China and then back into cash.
Prosecutors said Wen should have known the money was illegally obtained.
Wen, however, said she was simply trying to provide a better life for her son.
Her lawyer Mark Harries said Wen was simply another victim of an “expert criminal supervillian”, who he said had “used her and abandoned her because she was dependable and expendable”.
(REUTERS)
