Woman found guilty of laundering BTC

After a five-year investigation, Jian Wen (42) has been found guilty by a jury in London in connection with the biggest case of Bitcoin money laundering in British history. According to the Metropolitan Police, she herself was allegedly directly involved in laundering 150 BTC.

Investigators linked her case to a much larger case that was provisionally completed after police seized 61,000 Bitcoin. The value of these seized BTC is currently about US$4 billion.

According to Britain's Crown Prosecution Service, Jian Wen helped hide the origin of Bitcoin stolen from nearly 130,000 Chinese investors between 2014 and 2017.

It was also revealed during the trial that British police had already gained access to the 61,000 BTC in 2021, as reported by Reuters. However, she is not accused of the main crime, but another woman named Qian Zhimin.

Wen herself denied the charge of laundering BTC and stated that she had no knowledge of the criminal background. The criminal mastermind Zhimin fled to the United Kingdom in 2020 and has since disappeared.

However, the court reached different conclusions. Apparently, Jian Wen herself arranged Bitcoin movements and payments and was well aware of BTC scams in China.

British police also discovered that she wanted to buy several London properties for tens of millions of dollars. Her ambitious plans were eventually halted because she could not substantiate the origin of her BTC.

Jian Wen will now be sentenced in April on one charge of money laundering, to which she was found guilty in Southwark Crown Court. The jury disagreed on two other charges.