The mastermind of a £5bn Chinese investment fraud was found with a device containing £67m of cryptocurrency in a secret pocket of her jogging bottoms when she was arrested after years on the run, a court has heard.
Prosecutors are setting up a compensation scheme after Yadi Zhang, 47, conned around 128,000 Chinese investors into fraudulent wealth schemes between 2014 and 2017.
Zhang, who is also known as Zhimin Qian, admitted money laundering charges after police discovered more than 61,000 Bitcoin, now worth more than £5bn, in digital wallets, in the UK’s biggest ever cryptocurrency seizure.
She arrived in the UK on a false St Kitts and Nevis passport in September 2017 before coming to the attention of police after trying to buy some of London’s most expensive properties.
Zhang vanished after police raided her £5m six-bedroom rented house near Hampstead Heath in north London in 2018, but was finally arrested in York last year.
In written legal arguments, Martin Evans KC representing the Director of Public Prosecutions Stephen Parkinson, said a ledger and passwords were found in a purpose-made concealed pocket in the jogging bottoms she was wearing.
She revealed the access code for two wallets during interviews in prison, leading investigators to cryptocurrency worth around £67m.
The stash has been added to the £5bn Bitcoin hoard, which has reportedly been earmarked by Chancellor Rachel Reeves to help plug the hole in the public finances.
The fortune is at the centre of a High Court battle between the UK government and thousands of Chinese victims, who want to recover their investment and say it should reflect the huge rise in the value of Bitcoin.
Law firm Fieldfisher, which is representing around 1,000 victims, said some have lost their life savings and many are old and vulnerable.
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