Ex-takeaway worker in £2bn Bitcoin scam

A FORMER takeaway worker found with Bitcoin wallets worth more than £2 billion has been convicted of a crime linked to money-laundering.

Jian Wen, 42, was living in a flat above a Leeds Chinese restaurant when she became involved in converting the cryptocurrency into assets, including multi-million pound houses and thousands of pounds worth of jewellery.

The Bitcoin seizure is thought to be the biggest ever of its kind. Its value is understood to have increased to about £3.4billion because of fluctuation in the value of the cryptocurrency.

Prosecutors said there was no legitimate evidence for how the Bitcoin had been acquired and allege it is linked to an investment fraud in China. Another suspect is thought to be behind the fraud but they remain at large.

Wen’s new lifestyle led her to move into a six-bedroom house in north London in 2017, with rent of more than £17,000 per month, where she posed as an employee of an international jewellery business, and she brought her son to the UK to attend private school, the Crown Prosecution Service said.

From autumn 2017 she tried to buy a string of expensive houses but struggled to pass money-laundering checks.

She also bought jewellery worth tens of thousands of pounds in Zurich and properties in Dubai in 2019.

Yesterday, Wen was convicted of one count of entering into or becoming concerned in a money laundering arrangement at Southwark Crown Court. She is due to be sentenced on May 10. The guilty charge is linked to 150 Bitcoin being laundered which is worth around £7.5 million, but the Metropolitan Police said its investigation linked her to a wider fraudulent operation and it seized more than 61,000 Bitcoin.

The CPS has obtained a freezing order from the High Court while it carries out a civil recovery investigation that could lead to the forfeiture of the Bitcoin.