A former Chinese takeaway worker found guilty of money laundering after police seized more than £3bn worth of Bitcoin has been jailed for more than six years.

Jian Wen, 42, came to the attention of police when she tried to buy some of London’s most expensive properties, including a £23.5m seven-bedroom Hampstead mansion with a swimming pool and a nearby £12.5m home with a cinema and gym.

The investigation led to the UK’s biggest-ever cryptocurrency seizure when more than 61,000 Bitcoin were discovered in digital wallets.

The cryptocurrency was worth £1.4bn at the time but its value has now risen to more than £3bn, while 23,308 Bitcoin, now worth more than £1bn, linked to the probe remains in circulation.

The Bitcoin allegedly came from a £5bn investment scam carried out in China between 2014 and 2017.

Wen was not involved in the fraud but was said to have acted as a “front person” to help disguise the source of the money, some of which had been used to buy cryptocurrency and smuggled out of China on laptops.

She was found guilty of one count of money laundering, relating to 150 Bitcoin, now worth nearly £8m, between October 2017 and January 2022 last month following a retrial at Southwark Crown Court.

Wen was jailed for six years and eight months today by Judge Sally-Ann Hales KC, who told her: “I am in no doubt you came to enjoy the better things in life.

“The evidence showed you and, to some extent, members of your family were generously rewarded for your service.”

The court heard Wen, who has been in custody as a Category A prisoner since 3 March 2022, plans to appeal the conviction.

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Mark Harries KC, defending, said she “was a victim long before she became a criminal” and “was undoubtedly duped and used” by the alleged mastermind of the operation.

Mr Harries said she was “plucked from the most humble of backgrounds”, working and living in “shabby Chinese restaurants” into a “lifestyle of luxury” funded by the Bitcoin.

Wen lived in a £5m six-bedroom house rented for £17,000 a month near Hampstead Heath and travelled the world, spending tens of thousands of pounds on designer clothes and shoes in Harrods.

She drove a £25,000 E-Class Mercedes and sent her son to the £6,000-a-term Heathside preparatory school, the court heard.

She bought two apartments in Dubai for more than £500,000 and looked into buying a £10m 18th century Tuscan villa with a sea view.

But efforts to buy multimillion-pound properties in London triggered anti-money laundering checks and none of the purchases went ahead because the source of the Bitcoin could not be explained.

Wen, who had declared an income of just £5,979 in the 2016/17 financial year, could not explain the source of the funds and police first raided her home on 31 October 2018.

She accepted she was involved in an arrangement dealing with some of the cryptocurrency but said she did not know or suspect it was from the proceeds of crime.

The court heard that once the Bitcoin had been converted into fiat currency loaded on to black prepaid cards which could be used anywhere in the world.

Wen, who has a diploma in law and a business degree, was acquitted of a string of other money laundering charges and Mr Harries said she had wanted to make her and her son’s lives better, initially by legitimate means.

She was the “conduit”, with “her simple task the pressing of buttons for transactions of Bitcoin” and she had a “limited awareness of the extent of the criminal activity to which she had leant herself,” he said.

But prosecutor Gillian Jones KC said Wen was motivated by “greed” and her own “financial gain” not subjected to “coercion, intimidation or exploitation”.

A mother who murdered her three-year-old son after a “campaign of violence” has been jailed for life with a minimum term of 25 years.

Warning: This story contains details some may find upsetting

Christina Robinson, 30, violently shook her son Dwelaniyah Robinson at the family home in Bracken Court, Ushaw Moor, Durham, causing a fatal brain injury in November 2022.

During a three-week trial at Newcastle Crown Court, the prosecution said Robinson slapped and beat her son with a bamboo cane and hit him with spoons in the weeks leading up to his death.

After his death, investigators found a broken cane in her house which had traces of his skin and blood on it.

The court heard Robinson, a member of the Black Hebrew Israelite religion, claimed the Bible advised the use of the rod for the “correction” of children weeks before she murdered him.

She also neglected him by leaving him alone at home and deliberately scalded him as punishment, causing severe burns that left him in agony.

Robinson, who is originally from Tamworth, Staffordshire, told the court her son’s burns occurred accidentally while she washed him in the shower and she did not seek medical attention for him because she was ashamed.

Richard Wright KC, prosecuting, previously said as much as 20% of Dwelaniyah’s body was covered in burns that would have caused excruciating pain for several weeks.

Robinson was the only adult in the house when her son suffered the brain injury that killed him, jurors were told.

She waited 20 minutes before calling 999, first calling her husband, who was 240 miles away serving with the RAF at the time, and then using Google to look for ways to resuscitate a child.

A post-mortem examination revealed he had been the victim of a series of assaults and had sustained a number of non-accidental injuries.

Mr Wright said: “In other words, somebody had been deliberately hurting this little boy and had been doing so over a period of time.

“That person was his mother, the defendant Christina Robinson.”

In his closing speech, Mr Wright told the court the boy was “subjected to a campaign of violence and cruelty by his mother for petty wrongs”.

Robinson was also convicted of child neglect by leaving Dwelaniyah at home while she had an affair behind her husband’s back.

Robinson was found guilty of murder and four child cruelty offences, said to have taken place in the weeks leading up to Dwelaniyah’s death, when she was convicted on Thursday 21 March.

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A judicial review has been rejected after a legal challenge against the UK government over a river’s chicken poo pollution.

Environmental charity River Action UK took the government’s Environment Agency (EA) to court over its alleged failure to enforce regulations to protect the River Wye from pollution.

The river is around 150 miles long and mainly flows along the border between England and Wales.

Lawyers for the EA rejected claims it had not taken action and said warning letters had been sent out to those who may have been in breach of the regulations.

In a judgment handed down remotely on Friday, Mr Justice Dove found the EA had improved its enforcement of the Farming Rules for Water.

He consequently dismissed the claim for a judicial review.

River Action UK are considering appealing the judgment but said they have “a number of reasons to be pleased”.

Appeal under consideration

“We remain concerned that there is widespread evidence that agricultural regulations are still being broken across the Wye Catchment and that the EA is still not being held accountable for its failure to enforce the law,” the charity’s chair and founder Charles Watson said.

“River Action is simply not prepared to sit back and continue to watch these injustices to our rivers continue. Accordingly, we are taking immediate advice with regards to appealing the judgment.”

High Court hearing

A hearing was held at the High Court in Cardiff in February over two days.

The judge said the evidence provided by the National Farmers Union (NFU) demonstrated “current agricultural working practices would have to change” to comply with both the claimant and defendant’s interpretation of the regulations.

This would lead to changes in the way farms operate “together with associated costs”, the judge added.

He said he was “unable to accept that the evidence demonstrates the kind of impracticality or absurdity which justifies the rejection of the claimant’s and defendant’s case on this point”.

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An Environment Agency spokesperson said it “remained committed to protecting watercourses and working with farmers to meet their regulatory requirements”.

“We are working to implement a more preventative, advice-led approach to monitoring and enforcement,” they added.

“Anyone caught breaching environmental laws faces enforcement action, up to and including prosecution.”