How Chinese takeaway worker led police to Bitcoin worth £3bn in Britain’s biggest ever cryptocurrency seizure

Published

2 months ago

March 20, 2024

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Within weeks of Yadi Zhang’s arrival in London in September 2017, Jian Wen had left her job and room in a Chinese takeaway and moved into a £5m six-bedroom house near Hampstead Heath.

The women, who claimed to run an international jewellery business trading in diamonds and antiques in countries including Japan, Thailand and China, travelled the world and spent tens of thousands of pounds on designer clothes and shoes in Harrods.

In her newly affluent lifestyle, Wen bought a £25,000 E-Class Mercedes and sent her son to the £6,000-a-term Heathside preparatory school.

But alarm bells rang 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.

Wen, who had declared income of just £5,979 in the 2016/17 financial year, could not explain the source of the Bitcoin she would use to pay for the properties and police first raided the women’s home on 31 October 2018.

But it would be another two-and-a-half years before investigators realised they had made 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 investigation remains in circulation.

The £5bn investment fraud

The Bitcoin came from a £5bn investment scam carried out in China by Zhang, 45, who arrived in the UK on a false St Kitts and Nevis passport after conning nearly 130,000 Chinese investors in fraudulent wealth schemes between 2014 and 2017, a court heard.

Wen was not alleged to have been involved in the underlying fraud.

Zhang, who is also known as Zhimin Qian (which means money in Chinese) has fled the UK and her whereabouts are unknown.

Wen, 42, has been found guilty of one count of money laundering between October 2017 and January 2022 and the jury failed to reach verdicts on two similar counts following a trial at Southwark Crown Court.

Prosecutors are not seeking a retrial and Wen will be sentenced on 10 May.

She was acquitted of 10 other money laundering charges at a trial last year, which could not be reported over fears hackers could target the firm holding the seized cryptocurrency if the figures involved were made public.

As a Category A prisoner, Wen, a small woman wearing large round glasses, was led to the witness box in handcuffs, while two dock officers guarded the door as she gave evidence.

She told jurors she grew up in a working-class family in China, where she met her husband Marcus Barraclough before coming to the UK while heavily pregnant on a spousal visa in 2007.

Wen’s lifestyle change

The relationship broke down following the birth of their son and she lived a modest lifestyle in Leeds, where she took a law diploma and completed a BA in economics before moving to London in the summer of 2017.

She had already opened cryptocurrency accounts, making meticulous notes in her Wallace and Gromit notebook, but said she had “no idea” she would soon be dealing with Bitcoin on such a “massive scale”.

She applied for dozens of jobs while working in a Chinese takeaway in Abbey Wood, southeast London, where she lived in a room below the restaurant.

Wen said she saw an advert on Chinese social media app WeChat for a “butler” and first met Zhang at the five-star Royal Garden Hotel in Kensington. She later described her role as “live-in PA for a high net worth individual” on her CV.

The women soon moved into a £17,000-a-month Hampstead home after paying a £40,000 deposit and six months’ rent in advance.

Wen took trips to Thailand and Dubai and the women travelled extensively throughout Europe, with Zhang – who used aliases including Rose, Emma, and Hua Hua – avoiding countries with Chinese extradition agreements.

Hampstead mansions and a Tuscan villa

They sold Bitcoin and bought fine jewellery, with receipts found for £25,600 and £18,750 from Christopher Walser Vintage Diamonds, in Zurich, and two watches worth around £49,300 and £69,900 from Van Cleef & Arpels in Switzerland.

Over a three-month period at the end of 2017, more than £90,000 was spent in Harrods on designer women’s clothes, jewellery and shoes using a rewards card in Wen’s name, although she told jurors: “I was the one carrying the bags.”

Wen 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 initially claimed the cryptocurrency had been mined, then said it was given to her as a “love present”, drawing up a deed of gift stating she had been given 3,000 bitcoin, then worth £15m, by Zhang.

Prosecutors said Wen acted as a “front person” to help disguise the source of the stolen money, which had been used to buy cryptocurrency to remove the proceeds from China.

‘I was duped’

Gillian Jones KC said when Zhang landed in London she needed to convert the Bitcoin back into cash or “property, jewellery or other high-value items”.

Wen 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, claiming she was “duped” by the woman she called her boss.

“We were close… but looking back now, I was badly used,” she said. “I have no idea where she is.”

Police say they are still actively looking for Zhang.

UK

Landlords ‘holding parliament hostage’ over threat of selling up – as peers urged to ‘rescue’ Renters Reform Bill

Published

7 hours ago

May 15, 2024

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Landlords 'holding parliament hostage' over threat of selling up - as peers urged to 'rescue' Renters Reform Bill

Landlords have been accused of “holding parliament hostage” with the threat of selling up to stop tenants’ rights from being strengthened.

A fresh row erupted on the eve of the controversial Renters Reform Bill coming to the House of Lords for its second reading, as one landlord group warned of a supply crisis in the private sector.

Analysis of government data by the National Residential Landlords Association (NRLA) found that in the last six months of 2023, 45% of people in need of homeless prevention support said the reason was because the property owner planned to sell.

This was more than twice as much as the next most common reason, which was landlords planning to re-let the property.

Separately, data from Rightmove found that 50,000 rental properties are needed to bring the supply of rental homes back to pre-pandemic levels.

The NRLA said landlords need “confidence to stay in the market” and warned peers against attempting to strengthen the reform bill to give renters more rights, after it was watered down by MPs in the Commons.

They said the data comes in the wake of concerns being raised by campaign group Generation Rent, who have warned that landlords selling up is a leading cause of homelessness.

But Generation Rent accused the NRLA of “cynically” using their concerns “to hold parliament hostage to the idea that they will sell up over even the smallest strengthening of tenants’ rights”.

Ben Twomey, Chief Executive of Generation Rent, said: “Long term, if landlords sell up it makes little difference to the housing market.

“Bricks and mortar do not sink into the ground, and the home could be bought by another landlord, a first-time buyer or even repurposed for social housing.

“There will always be some landlords wanting to sell, for example because they are retiring or because their mortgages have become too costly.”

‘Relocation relief required for renters’

Mr Twomey said the short-term issue is that “tenants have an appalling lack of protection when landlords choose to sell up”.

He called on ministers to incentivise homes being sold to existing tenants if they can afford to buy, or incentivise selling homes with sitting tenants so they can stay in the property if it changes ownership to a new landlord.

The campaign group also want landlords to be prevented from selling a property for two years after a tenancy has begun, and a relocation relief for renters evicted through no fault of their own so they don’t need to pay for the final two months rent while they look for a new home.

Why are landlords selling up?

The NRLA said there are various reasons for landlords selling up but the key issues are growing costs and uncertainty over the Renters Reform bill.

The legislation, intended to redress the power balance between renters and landlords, has been mired in delay and controversy with the government heavily criticised for diluting some of its flagship proposals, including the ban on no-fault evictions.

First promised by the Tories five years ago, the ban has been delayed indefinitely pending court reforms, in what has widely been seen as a concession to landlords.

Peers urged to ‘rescue’ reform bill

The Renters Reform Coalition, which includes Generation Rent, has called on peers to “rescue this watered down bill”, saying it is a failure in its current form and “will preserve the central power imbalance at the root of why renting in England is in crisis”.

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The RCC want a package of reforms including the end of no-fault evictions, four months’ notice when they are evicted rather than two and limiting in-tenancy rent increases in line with inflation or wage growth.

As well as insecure tenancies, renters are facing soaring rents and poor conditions amid a wider housing crisis which at its heart is a problem of insufficient supply and spiralling affordability

Ben Beadle, Chief Executive of the National Residential Landlords Association, acknowledged the wider problems and said that “all parties need to accept widespread calls for policies to boost supply in the private rented sector”.

He added: “Landlords selling up is the single biggest challenge renters face. The only answer is to ensure responsible landlords have the confidence to stay in the market and sustain tenancies.

“As peers debate the Renters (Reform) Bill, it is vital that it works for landlords as well as tenants. As it stands it would achieve this balance. We are calling on peers to support the Bill to give the sector certainty about the future.”

UK

Teens buying knives illegally online as criminals ‘move with digital age’

Published

7 hours ago

May 15, 2024

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Teens buying knives illegally online as criminals 'move with digital age'

Underage teenagers buying knives online remains “a really concerning picture” for police, with illegal dealers selling weapons via social media.

The national lead for policing knife crime, Commander Stephen Clayman, said forces in England and Wales are keen to cut off the supply of weapons as part of efforts to stop injuries and deaths.

He said knives are being sold on TikTok, Snapchat and sites run by Facebook and Instagram owner Meta, while the Home Office revealed plans for knife detection technology and harsher punishments.

He told Sky News knife crime is “moving with the digital age” and said he is looking to retailers to take care over age verification.

Social media sites could also help by limiting harmful content, he added, and he is confident following talks with firms around ways technology can limit what teens are exposed to online.

“Knife crime is not the preserve solely of young people, but clearly we see, where young people are concerned, more proliferation, more public space violence, more use of these large intimidating weapons,” he said.

Some young people involved in criminality particularly favour what he calls “status knives”, more than a regular kitchen knife.

“It’s still a really concerning picture in terms of the accessibility of knives online,” he told journalists.

Official figures show knife crime rose by 7% in the year to December 2023.

In the year to March 2023, 82% of teenage homicide victims were killed with a knife, compared to 73% in the previous year.

As part of plans to combat the rise, all police forces in England and Wales will ramp up action for a week this month and again in November as part of Operation Sceptre.

The Home Office announced on Tuesday a £3.5m package for research and development of new technologies to detect knives from a distance when a suspect passes through two points.

An additional £547,863 will also be given to the Metropolitan Police to fund four more live facial recognition camera vans.

Laws around zombie knives, machetes and swords will be tightened up from September, giving police greater powers to seize weapons found in private properties.

It will be illegal to possess, sell, manufacture or transport zombie-style knives and machetes.

The maximum penalty for the possession of these and other banned weapons will also increase from six months to two years.

A surrender and compensation scheme is due to launch this summer.

UK

Record 3.1 million food bank parcels handed out in a year, says charity

Published

7 hours ago

May 15, 2024

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Record 3.1 million food bank parcels handed out in a year, says charity

A record 3.1 million emergency food parcels have been handed out in just a year, according to a charity.

The Trussell Trust says 3,121,404 were distributed by its network of 1,300 food banks in the year to the end of March.

Some 1,144,096 were for children and nearly two million for adults. The total is nearly double that of five years ago.

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The number of parcels given out during the 12 months to March 2023 was just under three million.

While the number of first-time users this year – 655,000 – is a slight drop, it’s still a rise of 40% compared with five years ago.

And the number of parcels given to someone of state pension age also increased by 27% to 179,000, according to the trust.

A foodbank in Leeds is among those seeing more demand from older people.

“Our volunteers are telling us that they are dealing with pensioners who can’t afford to put food on the table due to having to pay higher energy costs,” said Wendy Doyle, operations manager at Leeds South and East Foodbank.

Val McKie, who previously used food banks after she was left “couch-surfing and destitute” when her husband died and work dried up, said the rising need for food support is a “stain on our society”.

“I was overwhelmed with shame at the situation I was in,” said Ms McKie.

“I struggled for years before I found the courage and strength to ask for help, these feelings are shared by so many people who need the support of food banks.”

The Trussell Trust wants politicians to back a “supportive social security system” for parents, carers and people with disabilities who face increased living costs.

Emma Revie, the trust’s chief executive, said the UK was facing “historically high levels of food bank need”.

“As a society, we cannot allow this to continue. We must not let food banks become the new norm,” she said.

“As we approach the next UK general election, we urgently need all political leaders to set out how they will build a future where no one needs a food bank to survive.”

Social change group the Joseph Rowntree Foundation (JRF) repeated calls for a protected minimum amount of financial support so people can afford the essentials.

Iain Porter, JRF senior policy adviser, said: “This is not what an economy returning to full health looks like.

“The latest record-breaking emergency food parcel figures show the painful economic reality facing families with the least.”

He said the issue was one that “no political party can ignore in this election year”.

Alison McGovern, Labour’s acting shadow work and pensions secretary, said the “dreadful” figures “lay bare the reality facing households across the country after 14 years of Tory misery”.

She said Labour would tackle the “root causes of poverty” – for example building more affordable housing and protecting renters, cutting school uniform costs and providing breakfast clubs in every primary school.

The government said its cost-of-living support package had prevented 1.3 million people falling into poverty in 2022-23.

It said it was also “raising the National Living Wage, cutting taxes and driving down inflation while investing billions through our Back to Work Plan”.