Jian Wen came to Britain to ‘enjoy the better things in life’.
The 42-year-old drove an E-Class Mercedes-Benz, enjoyed a £30,000 Harrods shopping spree and enrolled her son in the prestigious £6,000-per-term Heathside Preparatory School, near her £5 million home.
It wasn’t until she started building a global property empire, attempting to buy a £23 million Hampstead mansion, a £10 million Tuscan villa and apartments in Dubai, that alarm bells started ringing about the single mother who barely earns £ 5,000 to her name when she arrived in Britain to work in a Chinese takeaway.
Yesterday, the Chinese immigrant who helped launder Bitcoin following a £5 billion investment fraud was jailed for more than six years.
Judge Sally-Ann Hales QC said Wen played a key role in a sophisticated criminal enterprise that was “generously rewarded” for her work in laundering the proceeds of an asset management scam in China where 128,000 investors were duped.
Police have linked Wen’s accounts to a staggering £3.4 billion worth of cryptocurrency, which she helped a fraudster launder in Britain.
After moving to Britain in 2007, Wen ended up living under a Chinese restaurant in London, earning just £5,979 a year.
But her life changed after she saw an advertisement on Chinese social media app WeChat showing her as a “butler” for a woman claiming to run an international company dealing in diamonds and antiques.
Just weeks after meeting the woman at a five-star hotel in Kensington, Wen moved into a £5million six-bedroom mansion near Hampstead Heath, rented for £17,000 a month.
The pair traveled the world, vacationing in Europe, Thailand and Dubai under various aliases, while Wen opened a series of cryptocurrency accounts and kept meticulous notes of transactions in a notebook kept by Wallace and Gromit.
They sold Bitcoin and bought fine jewellery, splurging on more than £44,000 worth of gemstones at Christopher Walser Vintage Diamonds in Zurich, and watches worth £119,000 from Van Cleef & Arpels.
In three months, more than £90,000 was spent in Harrods on designer clothes, jewelery and shoes using a rewards card in Wen’s name.
She bought two apartments in Dubai for more than £500,000 and was considering buying a £10 million 18th-century Tuscan villa with sea views.
Wen then tried to buy a £23.5 million seven-bedroom Hampstead mansion with a swimming pool and a nearby £12.5 million house with a cinema and gym.
But the spending spree prompted anti-money laundering controls and purchases were halted after she could not explain where the Bitcoin she wanted to use to pay for the properties came from.
Wen initially claimed that the cryptocurrency had been mined, but then said it was given to her as a “love gift.”
Click here to change the format of this module
Scotland Yard launched a major investigation into Britain’s largest ever cryptocurrency seizure in 2021, when more than 61,000 Bitcoin was discovered in digital wallets hidden in a safe.
The cryptocurrency was worth £1.4 billion at the time, but its value has now risen to £3.4 billion.
Wen insisted she had been duped by her boss.
Her barrister Mark Harris QC said: ‘Mrs Wen was a vulnerable, desperate woman whose self-esteem could not have been at a very high level at all.
‘She was a vulnerable woman. No doubt she has been deceived and used.” But Judge Hales told the defendant: ‘I have no doubt that you have come to enjoy the better things in life.
“The evidence showed that you were generously rewarded for your services.
‘It is argued on your behalf that your guilt lies somewhere in the middle. I do not agree with it. The crime was sophisticated and involved significant planning.
‘I do not agree that your involvement in the crime was the result of any element of exploitation.
“I disagree with your counsel’s characterization of you as a victim.”
Wen was sentenced at Southwark Crown Court to six years and eight months for becoming involved in a money laundering scheme between October 2017 and January 2022.