Nov. 11 (UPI) -- A Chinese woman who defrauded hundreds of thousands of retirees of more than $6 billion then fled to an English mansion has been sentenced to nearly 12 years in prison in the United Kingdom, law enforcement officials said Tuesday.
Zhimin Qian, 47, was sentenced to 11 years and 8 months in prison for one charge of possessing and one charge of transferring criminal property, namely cryptocurrency, under the Proceeds of Crime Act, London's Metropolitan Police said.
Her associate, Seng Hok Ling, 47, was sentenced to 4 years and 11 months for transferring criminal property in the form of cryptocurrency. Both pleaded guilty to the charges in September.
Qian moved into a mansion she rented in Hampstead in north London after fleeing China. A year later, police raided the home and seized the large cache of cryptocurrency.
The Met recovered more than 61,000 bitcoin from Qian, which is the largest confirmed crypto seizure in the world, the Met said. Civil recovery proceedings are ongoing.
