A senior NHS manager, described by a judge as “devious, scheming and manipulative”, has been jailed for 28 years for raping and sexually assaulting girls he groomed on Snapchat.

Paul Lipscombe, 51, from Rothley in Leicestershire, admitted 34 offences against six girls – aged between 12 and 15 – between September 2023 and April 2024 after targeting them via the social media app.

Leicester Crown Court heard that police became aware of his offending after a 15-year-old girl, who was reported missing, told officers that she had been raped.

Prosecutor Frida Hussain KC told Judge Keith Raynor on Monday that Lipscombe was initially arrested on suspicion of kidnapping the missing girl when officers pulled over his car in Birstall, near Leicester, in April 2024.

Ms Hussain told the court the girl went missing from her home late at night and was picked up by Lipscombe nearby, before he took her to a hotel. Police later found the child at a rented address.

“He accused other people of serious crimes simply in order to mask his own crimes,” Ms Hussain added.

Follow-up searches at the hotel, his car and home uncovered evidence that the youngster had been sexually assaulted. Police recovered items including soft toys, restraints, vodka, his phone and another mobile which had been wiped.

Devious, scheming and manipulative

Passing sentence on Tuesday, Judge Raynor told Lipscombe he was “intelligent, confident, resourceful and well-organised” and the victims had been “truly vulnerable”.

“The evidence shows you to have been devious, scheming and manipulative. You were bold in your offending and you took very high risks. The sexual abuse of young girls was an obsession in life for you,” he said.

Leicester Crown Court heard that when Lipscombe initially contacted the girls, he told them he was in his late 20s or early 30s. Five of the six girls had met with him and been raped or sexually assaulted.

A significant number of indecent images of children were discovered on his devices and online storage accounts. He had also set up a website where people could buy illegal videos of child abuse created through AI technology.

The court was told Lipscombe had been targeting girls using several Snapchat accounts, including two fake names, Dom Woodmore and George.

In February, Paul Lipscombe pleaded guilty to 34 offences, including two counts of rape of a child under 13; 21 counts of sexual activity with a child; three counts of sexual assault of a child under 13; and causing or inciting a child to engage in sexual activity.

He also admitted six counts of making indecent photographs of children and distributing indecent photographs of children.

Lipscombe was sentenced on Tuesday to 28 years and one month, and to remain on licence for three years after his release. He has been placed on the sex offenders register for life.

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Could be other victims, say police

Detective Constable Lauren Speight, from the Child Abuse Investigation Unit (CAIU), said: “Our investigation into the offending carried out by this man is continuing.

“We suspect he may have been in contact with other girls and could well have committed sexual offences against others. We would urge anyone who has been in contact with him to contact us.”

The married NHS executive worked with the University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire NHS Trust as a performance and informatics specialist.

In a statement, the trust said Lipscombe was initially suspended when he was arrested, then later dismissed in June 2024.

It added there was “nothing has been identified at this stage to indicate this individual’s criminal activity was committed as part of their role”.

The flying of St George’s flags across the country are creating “no-go” zones for NHS staff, with some facing frequent abuse, health bosses have warned.

Several NHS trust chief executives and leaders have said staff feel intimidated by the national symbols, including when they make home visits.

The findings follow a survey conducted among senior managers, 45% of whom were extremely concerned about discrimination towards staff.

A leader of a trust said anonymously that there were safety issues around how they work in the community, with nurses regularly visiting patients in their homes alone.

He said: “You’re going in on your own, you’re locking the door behind you.

“I have been into homes with people who have been convicted of sex offences, and we go in and provide care to them.

“It can be a really precarious situation, and they [the nurses] handle that absolutely brilliantly.

“The autonomy and the clinical decisions that they make within that, I think, is fantastic.

“We saw during the time when the flags went up – our staff, who are a large minority of black and Asian staff, feeling deliberately intimidated.

“It felt like the flags were up creating no-go zones. That’s what it felt like to them.

“You add that on top of real autonomous working, that real bravery of working in people’s homes, with an environment… [where] it feels like it’s an area that’s designed to exclude them.

“Our staff continue to work in that environment, and I think they deserve our real praise and thanks as a nation, frankly, for doing that within those really difficult circumstances.”

He added his trust had also seen “individual instances of aggression towards staff”.

Another NHS trust leader said a member of staff, who is white and has children of mixed heritage, had asked some people putting up flags to move so she could park her car.

“The individuals filmed what was happening, and then followed her, and she continued to receive abuse over a series of several days, not because she objected to the flags, but because she disturbed them,” they said.

“There are lots of stories like that. There are lots of stories where people have tried to take flags down outside of their own homes and have been abused and threatened as a consequence of that.”

The leader said the “springing up of flags everywhere has created another form of intimidation and concern for many, many of our staff”.

Daniel Elkes, chief executive of NHS Providers, which represents trusts, said: “The NHS has relied on overseas recruitment for a long time to ensure we have the right workforce.

“We have a really diverse workforce and without that you can’t deliver the NHS.

“We are trying to recruit from the very places where we provide healthcare so the intake into the NHS is representative of British people from more diverse backgrounds.”

Professor Nicola Ranger, the Royal College of Nursing’s general secretary, said: “Following a summer of further racist disorder, it is little wonder a growing number of nursing staff report feeling unsafe, particularly when having to work on their own and often at night.

“The government and all politicians have to stop pandering to dangerous anti-migrant sentiments and employers must prioritise tackling racism and work with trade unions to develop stronger mechanisms to protect staff.”

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A Department of Health and Social Care spokesperson said there was “no place for intimidation, racism or abuse in our country or our NHS”, adding that threats and aggression should be reported to police.

They said the government valued the “diversity of our NHS”, and that workers “must be treated with dignity and respect”.

“Our flags represent our history, our heritage, and our values,” they said. “They are a symbol of our nation and belong to all of us – not just some of us.”

The survey findings come ahead of strike action by resident doctors over pay and jobs due to take place on Friday for five days.

A woman caught with £5bn in Bitcoin in the UK’s highest ever value money laundering investigation has been jailed for 11 years and eight months – after nearly five years on the run.

Zhimin Qian, 47, sat up in bed looking stunned when police kicked open the bedroom door of an Airbnb in a York suburb on 22 April last year.

She vanished and went on the run after officers seized more than 61,000 Bitcoin in the country’s biggest cryptocurrency seizure in a raid of her rented £5m home next to Hampstead Heath.

Qian – who fled China after carrying out a huge fraud and arrived in the UK in 2017 on a false St Kitts and Nevis passport in the name of Yadi Zhang – pleaded guilty to two money laundering offences at Southwark Crown Court.

Police said she styled herself the “Goddess of Wealth” and wore imperial robes as her sales teams offered 300% returns at conferences in luxury hotels in China promoting her “Britain Nice Life Insurance” scheme.

In a slick video played to targets, the narrator says “Britain is a nation of glories and dreams” over footage of the Houses of Parliament, Oxford University, Windsor Castle, Buckingham Palace and the City of London.

Qian was already wanted in China over two other scams when she orchestrated the gigantic investment fraud, conning more than 128,000 victims from every province out of 40bn Yuan (around £4.6bn) between 2014 and 2017.

More than 80 people have been convicted in China over the scam, but Qian converted some of the proceeds into more than 70,000 Bitcoin and fled, crossing the border into Myanmar on a moped before arriving at Heathrow Airport in September 2017.

She recruited Jian Wen, who left her job in a south London Chinese takeaway, and the women moved into a £17,000-a-month rented £5m house next to Hampstead Heath, posing as the bosses on an international jewellery business.

They travelled extensively across Europe, buying jewellery and spending tens of thousands of pounds on designer clothes and shoes in Harrods, while Wen bought a £25,000 E-Class Mercedes and sent her son to the £6,000-a-term Heathside preparatory school.

Qian made extensive notes about her “grandiose” plans to increase her social standing.

She wanted to meet a royal duke, hoped the Dalai Lama would anoint her as a reincarnated Goddess, and dreamed of ruling Liberland – an unrecognised micronation on the Croation side of the Danube – as Queen.

But the women came to the attention of police when they tried to buy a £24m seven-bedroom Hampstead mansion with a swimming pool, using more than £800,000 converted from Bitcoin.

Officers raided their home in October 2018 and seized £300,000 in cash and cheques, along with phones and laptops, and found a hand drawn “treasure map” leading from Harrods to a safety deposit box containing more devices.

When investigators finally accessed the cryptocurrency wallets stored on them, they thought someone had put the decimal point in the wrong place.

The 61,279 Bitcoin was then worth £1.4bn and has now soared to more than £5bn, making it the biggest ever cryptocurrency seizure in Britain and, until recently, the world.

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Police believed Qian had left the country, but shortly before Wen was found guilty of money laundering offences in March last year, Detective Constable Joe Ryan detected activity on a cryptocurrency exchange from a wallet linked to Qian, which hadn’t been used since 2019.

The exchange provided details of the account holder – Seng Hok Ling, a Malaysian national with a previous conviction for fraud in Hong Kong in 2015, who was living in Matlock, Derbyshire.

Working on the theory he may be in contact with Qian, detectives stepped up the manhunt, which took them all over the UK, before they identified her at a detached house in a York suburb.

When police kicked open the upstairs bedroom door, there was Qian, lying under a bright red duvet and struggling to put on her top as she stared wide eyed at officers from behind her thick glasses.

Detective Constable Chris Woods told colleagues: “It’s her.”

A ledger and passwords found sewn inside a purpose-made concealed pocket in the jogging bottoms she was wearing, led investigators to Bitcoin and other cryptocurrency worth around £67m.

Ling had helped her stay on the run, providing false documents and money laundering services, and renting Airbnb properties, including a house in Glasgow and a remote farmhouse near Loch Tay in the Scottish Highlands.

The court heard he tried to get one passport in the name of dead Hong Kong actress Dianxia Shen.

A rotating entourage of cooks, drivers and security guards were employed on lucrative contracts to look after Qian, who they assumed was a rich recluse.

They were made to sign strict confidentiality agreements, which barred them from using Chinese devices or apps and photographing, recording or videoing “anyone or anything indoors or outdoors” – with breaches resulting in dismissal and fines of up to $30,000.

Metropolitan Police officers travelled to Beijing and Tianjin to speak to victims of the fraud, some of whom had lost their life savings, seen their family collapse or been left unable to pay for medical care.

Chinese police officers were lined up to become the first in history to give evidence in a UK court, but Qian pleaded guilty on the first day of the trial, while Ling also admitted a money laundering charge.

The court heard that since being in prison Qian has had poetry published and her artwork displayed at an exhibition.

Wen was jailed for six years and eight months last year, and the sentencing of Qian and Ling marks the end of what the Met’s head of economic and cyber crime called “one of the longest running and most complex economic crime investigations” in the force’s history.

“She lived, while she was on the run in the UK, a relatively reclusive lifestyle. She had that entourage of people around her, but she didn’t venture out much,” he said of Qian.

“And we have some understanding from some of her musings and some of thoughts around what she may do with the rest of her money and her wealth and her life ultimately.

“But thankfully, we were able to catch her and bring her to justice before some of those dreams were realised.”

The fortune is now at the centre of a High Court battle between the UK government and thousands of Chinese victims.

Prosecutors have set up a compensation scheme but lawyers representing those who want to recover their investments say it should reflect the huge rise in the value of Bitcoin and not just what they put in.