Takeaway worker, 42, who lived above a Chinese restaurant before using £2bn of Bitcoin to rent a six-bed £17,000-a-month house in London faces jail over money laundering arrangement

When Jian Wen arrived in the UK with just ££5,979 to her name she took a job in a Chinese takeaway and the cheap bedsit above it.

Within weeks she had moved into a £5million six-bedroom house yards from Hampstead Heath, was sending son to a the prestigious £6,000-a-term Heathside prep, driving a new Mercedes and doing her shopping in Harrods. 

No expense was spared as she jetted to Rome, Switzerland, Norway, Thailand, China, Japan where she saw the sights under the guise of a jewellery business owner trading in diamonds and antiques.

Wen then bought two flats in Dubai for more than £500,000 and began looking at bidding for a £10m 18th century Tuscan villa with views to the coast.

But it was only when she tried to acquire a £23million Hampstead mansion, that alarm bells rang in the UK.  

Now police have linked Wen’s accounts to £3.4billion in the cryptocurrency, which she was helping a fugitive to launder. Piles of cash were found in her home and she is now facing jail.

The extraordinary story of her life at the heart of one of Britain’s biggest Bitcoin seizure can be told after a five-year probe has ended in her conviction for money laundering.

The 42-year-old acted as a front for a £5billion racket masterminded by Yadi Zhang, also known as Zhimin Qian, who fled to the UK in 2017 after ripping off 128,000 investors in China. Qian has since vanished.

Jian Wen barely had £5,000 to her name when she arrived in Britain to work in a London Chinese takeaway. But within weeks of meeting a mysterious benefactor in 2016, she was living the lifestyle of a Bitcoin billionaire building a global property empire.

Southwark Crown Court heard how she and Qian travelled the world under various aliases, while Wen opened a series of cryptocurrency accounts. She bought two apartments in Dubai then attempted to buy the Hampstead mansion. But the spending spree triggered money laundering checks.

Scotland Yard launched a major investigation making the UK’s biggest-ever cryptocurrency seizure in 2021. Yesterday Wen was convicted of money laundering.

Andrew Penhale, Chief Crown prosecutor, said: ‘Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are increasingly being used by organised criminals to disguise and transfer assets.’

On Wednesday, Wen was convicted of one count of entering into or becoming concerned in a money laundering arrangement at Southwark Crown Court. Another suspect is thought to be behind the fraud but they remain at large.

Prosecutors claimed that in addition to renting the opulent property in north London, Wen had tried to buy a string of expensive houses in London from Autumn 2017.

However, she struggled to pass money-laundering checks and her claims that she had earned millions mining Bitcoin were not believed.

She also travelled abroad, buying jewellery worth tens of thousands of pounds in Zurich and buying properties in Dubai in 2019.

Prosecutors said Wen helped hide the source of money allegedly stolen from nearly 130,000 Chinese investors in fraudulent wealth schemes between 2014 and 2017.

She was not alleged to have been involved in the underlying fraud, which prosecutors said was masterminded by a woman known to Wen as Zhang Yadi, whose real name is Qian Zhimin.

Wen denied three counts of money laundering, giving evidence that Zhang – who fled Britain in 2020 and whose whereabouts are unknown – told her she was independently wealthy and that Wen did not have any knowledge of criminality.

She was found guilty by jurors of one count on Monday following a trial at Southwark Crown Court. The jury was unable to reach a verdict on two other counts. She is due to be sentenced on May 10. 

Prosecutor Gillian Jones said at the start of the trial that Zhang had arrived in Britain on a false St. Kitts and Nevis passport in 2017, shortly after Chinese authorities began to investigate the fraud.

Zhang needed to convert the stolen money, which was converted into bitcoin to take it out of China, back into cash and used Wen as her ‘front person’, Jones said.

Prosecutors said Wen should have known Zhang’s money was illegally obtained, including due to her aversion to travelling to countries which had an extradition treaty with China.

Wen, however, said she was simply trying to provide a better life for her son. Her lawyer Mark Harries described Zhang as an ‘expert criminal supervillian’, who constantly lied to Wen about the source of the money.

Zhang ‘used her and abandoned her because she was dependable and expendable’, Harries said, when she disappeared in 2020.

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.

Chief Crown prosecutor Andrew Penhale said: ‘Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are increasingly being used by organised criminals to disguise and transfer assets, so that fraudsters may enjoy the benefits of their criminal conduct.

‘This case, involving the largest cryptocurrency seizure in the UK, illustrates the scale of criminal proceeds available to those fraudsters.

‘Although the original fraudster remains at large, the Metropolitan Police and CPS have successfully secured a money laundering conviction against Jian Wen, an individual employed to launder criminal proceeds.

‘The CPS will now work to ensure, through criminal confiscation and civil proceedings, that the criminal assets remain beyond the fraudsters’ reach.

‘The CPS is committed to working closely with law enforcement and investigatory authorities, to bring to justice individuals and companies who engage in laundering criminal proceeds through cryptocurrency.’