A woman who went from living in a flat above a takeaway to a Hampstead mansion has been jailed for her part in a £1.7 million cryptocurrency laundering scheme.
Jian Wen, of Parade Mansions, Hendon, was sentenced to six years and eight months in prison for entering into, or becoming concerned in, a money laundering arrangement.
The 42-year-old was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court on Wednesday, May 22.
Her conviction relates to a cryptocurrency wallet which contained 150 bitcoin, which at the relevant time had a £1.7 million value.
She had previously had over £3.4 billion in Bitcoin seized by police – the UK’s largest Bitcoin seizure yet.
A court heard that Wen was living in a flat above a takeaway in Leeds when she became involved in a criminal scheme to convert the cryptocurrency into assets including multi-million pound houses and thousands of pounds worth of jewellery.
During her time in Leeds, she declared modest earnings in 2015 and 2016 of just £12,800 and £5,979.
But when she met a fellow Chinese national believed to be behind the scheme her lifestyle changed and in 2017, they moved into a six-bedroom property in Hampstead, rented for more than £17,000 a month.
Commander Steve Clayman, whose team led the investigation, said: “Thanks to the hard work and perseverance of highly skilled detectives in the Met, we have been able to disrupt a sophisticated economic crime operation – the sheer scale of which demonstrates how international criminals seek to exploit cryptocurrency for illegal purposes.
“Our team has helped secure justice and has persevered to trace this Bitcoin and identify the criminality it was linked to."
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