Britain tackles what to do with billions of bitcoins from fraud. Chinese woman sent behind bars after years

Qian Zhimin, the head of a massive Chinese investment scam that robbed thousands of people of their savings, has been sentenced in Britain to eleven years and eight months for money laundering through bitcoin.

She was on the run for almost seven years. She escaped from China via Myanmar to London, where she lived under a false name and passport.

While in Europe, she converted bitcoins into cash, invested in luxury real estate and planned to buy a villa in Tuscany. In one rented apartment, police seized a laptop and a safety deposit box containing 61 thousand bitcoins. The value of those is now almost 5.5 billion euros.

The woman was also helped by two other people who have already been convicted of money laundering in Britain. One of them helped police, albeit unwittingly, to locate Zhimin.

The British authorities are considering a compensation scheme for thousands of Chinese victims and deciding what to do with the seized assets, especially bitcoins.

(reuters, max)