Chinese fraud mastermind jailed in UK for laundering bitcoin
The mastermind of a vast Ponzi scheme in China was on Tuesday jailed in Britain for over 11 years for laundering the proceeds of the fraud into cryptocurrency now worth billions of dollars.Qian Zhimin pleaded guilty to two money laundering charges in September, after an investigation during which British police seized more than 61,000 bitcoin – currently worth over $6 billion – in one of the largest ever cryptocurrency seizures."You were the architect of this offending from its inception to its conclusion," Judge Sally-Ann Hales told Qian while sentencing her at London's Southwark Crown Court."The scale of the money laundering is unprecedented. Your motive was one of pure greed."