A former Chinese takeaway employee on trial after police seized Bitcoin value £1.4bn has advised a jury she was “duped” by the lady who defrauded the cash.
Jian Wen, 42, is alleged to have acted as a “front person” to assist launder a few of the earnings of a £5bn funding fraud carried out in China by Zhimin Qian between 2014 and 2017.
Qian, which suggests cash in Chinese, fled the UK after police raided the six-bedroom home the ladies rented for greater than £17,000 a month close to Hampstead Heath in northwest London, a court docket has heard.
Officers seized units from the property, in addition to a security deposit field containing digital wallets holding greater than 61,000 Bitcoin, valued at greater than £1.4bn, when police gained entry in the summertime of 2021.
Wen is on trial at Southwark Crown Court, the place she denies three counts of cash laundering, relating to 3 cryptocurrency wallets, between October 2017 and January 2022.
She accepts she was concerned in an association coping with cryptocurrency however advised jurors: “I didn’t know her Bitcoin came from whatever the prosecution has accused me of. I had no idea at all.”
Wen advised the jury “I have no idea where she is” after Qian, who got here to the UK utilizing the false id Yadi Zhang on a St Kitts and Nevis passport, vanished a day earlier than she was attributable to be interviewed by police on 1 September 2020.
“I think I was duped,” she stated. “I’m ashamed of saying that.”
Wen wept as she stated: “We were close… but looking back now I was used badly.”
She advised jurors she was working in a takeaway in southeast London when she first met Zhang after making use of to develop into her “butler”, believing she was a businesswoman with a world jewelry and antiques agency.
Prosecutors say Qian purchased cryptocurrency to get the proceeds of the fraud overseas and wanted to transform the Bitcoin again into money or “property, jewellery or other high-value items”.
The court docket has heard the pair travelled extensively all through Europe, promoting Bitcoin and shopping for wonderful jewelry, together with watches value round £49,000 and £70,000 from Van Cleef & Arpels in Switzerland.
Wen tried to purchase properties in London, together with a seven-bedroom Hampstead mansion with a swimming pool, which was in the marketplace for £23.5m, and a £12.5m eight-bedroom dwelling with a cinema and fitness center.
But not one of the purchases went forward as a result of the supply of the Bitcoin could not be defined, the court docket has heard.
The trial continues
Source: information.sky.com”