bourbiza mohamed
Jian Wen got here to Britain to ‘benefit from the higher issues in life’.
The 42-year-old drove a E-Class Mercedes-Benz, indulged in £30,000 Harrods purchasing sprees and enrolled her son at prestigious £6,000-a-term Heathside Preparatory Faculty close to her £5 million house.
It was solely when she launched into constructing a world property empire, making an attempt to purchase a £23m Hampstead mansion, a £10million Tuscan villa and residences in Dubai that alarm bells began to ring in regards to the single mom who barely had £5,000 to her identify when she arrived within the UK to work in a Chinese language takeaway.
Yesterday the Chinese language immigrant who helped launder Bitcoin from a £5bn funding fraud was jailed for greater than six years.
Choose Sally-Ann Hales, KC, mentioned Wen performed a key function in a complicated felony enterprise who was ‘generously rewarded’ for her work laundering the proceeds of a wealth administration swindle in China, the place 128,000 buyers had been duped.
Jian Wen (pictured) got here to Britain to ‘benefit from the higher issues in life’
Wen tried to purchase a £23million Hampstead mansion (pictured) – prompting alarm bells to ring over the supply of the funds
Police have linked Wen’s accounts to a staggering £3.4billion within the cryptocurrency, which she was serving to a fraudster to launder in Britain.
A receipt for £75,000 value of diamonds purchased in Zurich
After Wen moved to Britain in 2007 she ended up residing under a Chinese language restaurant in London, incomes simply £5,979 a yr.
However life modified after she noticed an advert on Chinese language social media app WeChat to be a ‘butler’ for a girl who claimed to run a world enterprise buying and selling in diamonds and antiques.
Simply weeks after assembly the girl at a five-star resort in Kensington, Wen moved to a £5million six-bedroom manor home close to Hampstead Heath rented for £17,000 a month.
The pair travelled around the globe, holidaying in Europe, Thailand and Dubai underneath varied aliases, whereas Wen opened a collection of cryptocurrency accounts making meticulous notes of transactions in a Wallace and Gromit pocket book.
They offered Bitcoin and acquired high quality jewelry, forking out on over £44,000 value of gems at Christopher Walser Classic Diamonds in Zurich, and watches value £119,000 from Van Cleef & Arpels.
In three months, greater than £90,000 was spent in Harrods on designer clothes, jewelry and sneakers utilizing a rewards card in Wen’s identify.
She snapped up two residences in Dubai for greater than £500,000 and seemed into shopping for a £10m 18th century Tuscan villa with a sea view.
Wen then tried to purchase a £23.5m seven-bedroom Hampstead mansion with a swimming pool and a close-by £12.5m house with a cinema and gymnasium.
Wen was residing in a basement room underneath a Chinese language takeaway in Abbey Wooden, south-east London. However inside weeks, she moved into this fabulous six-bedroom home in Hampstead Heath, paying £17,000 a month in lease in September 2017
Wen jetted throughout Europe, together with to Germany. She denied realizing she was concerned in cash laundering and insisted she had been duped by her boss
Piles of money had been discovered by police throughout searches linked to Jian Wen
Jian Wen took meticulous notes in a Wallace and Gromit pocket book displaying what was purchased and offered by way of crypto. On this one she mentioned ‘I will be useless in the event that they broke the BTC code’ – BTC is a reference to Bitcoin
However the spending spree triggered anti-money laundering checks and the purchases had been halted after she couldn’t clarify the supply of the Bitcoin she deliberate to make use of to pay for the properties.
Wen initially claimed the cryptocurrency had been mined, then mentioned it was given to her as a ‘love current’.
Scotland Yard launched a serious investigation making the UK’s biggest-ever cryptocurrency seizure in 2021 when greater than 61,000 Bitcoin had been found in digital wallets hidden in a security deposit field.
The cryptocurrency was value £1.4billion on the time, however its worth has now risen to £3.4billion.
Wen insisted she had been duped by her boss.
Her lawyer Mark Harris, KC, mentioned: ‘Ms Wen was a fragile, determined lady whose vanity can’t have been in a really excessive place in any respect.
‘She was a susceptible lady. She was undoubtedly duped and used.’ However Choose Hales advised the defendant: ‘I’m in little doubt that you just got here to benefit from the higher issues in life.
‘The proof confirmed that you just had been generously rewarded to your providers.
‘It’s submitted in your behalf that your culpability falls into the medium vary. I don’t agree. The offending was subtle and it concerned important planning.
Wen poses on the Lindt store in Zurich on one in all her journeys to Europe. She claimed it was to purchase objects for a jewelry enterprise, producing receipts for diamonds and watches
Wen went to Norway on enterprise too. It was an unimaginable transformation for a girl who had been residing above or under Chinese language takeaways for years
‘I don’t agree that your involvement within the offence was on account of any ingredient of exploitation.
‘I don’t agree together with your counsel’s characterisation of you as a sufferer.’
Wen was sentenced to 6 years and eight months at Southwark Crown Court docket for getting into or turning into involved in a cash laundering association between October 2017 and January 2022
