Woman Accused of Laundering Bitcoin Proceeds of £5bn Fraud in London
As we await the big COPA vs. Dr. Craig Wright trial in London, there is another cryptocurrency case making headlines in the UK.
A British-Chinese woman. Jian Wen, 42, has gone on trial for laundering bitcoin derived from a £5bn fraud in China committed by her employer.
Wen was allegedly laundering funds on behalf of behalf of a Chinese woman, Yadi Zhang, Southwark Crown Court in London heard.
From the Financial Times of London:
Zhang had stolen approximately £5bn from more than 128,000 investors in China between 2014 and 2017 through a wealth management fraud before converting the money into bitcoin and arriving in London in 2017 under a false identity, prosecutors told the court.
Wen is accused of helping to convert some of the bitcoin into cash, jewellery and other luxury items, as well as property, “all to disguise the true source of the funds”, said Gillian Jones KC, acting on behalf of the Crown Prosecution Service.
In court Monday, Wen was described as “the front person” who would “keep Ms. Zhang in the background”.
As for Dr. Craig Wright, he had offered a settlement to some exchanges. Wright was part of the team that created bitcoin and is regularly referred to as the true "Satoshi", Bitcoin's founder.
Dr. Wright would have afforded the parties an “irrevocable license in perpetuity to exploit, use, assign, or license” with respect to his copyrights and database rights in the BTC, BCH and ABC blockchains. In exchange for this, the parties would have had to sign a declaration which acknowledges Bitcoin and its derivatives (BTC, BCH and ABC) stem from Satoshi Nakamoto’s white paper. They must acknowledge that Satoshi Nakamoto’s original vision was for ‘small casual transactions’ otherwise known as micropayments and ‘scaling on-chain’, and formally recognize that BTC, BCH and ABC “now have separate purposes and uses not contemplated by Satoshi Nakamoto.”
“This settlement offer preserves my objective of maintaining the integrity of the Bitcoin system as it was initially developed, while limiting (for all parties) the needless expense of a lengthy High Court trial, which would take our collective focus away from supporting, adopting and advancing digital currency technologies – not just my own work, but those of potential good faith competitors (my legal opponents included).”
Dr Wright has several advanced academic degrees in diverse fields, including a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) in Computer Science and Economicsfrom Charles Sturt University (completed in 2014; graduated in 2017), a Doctor of Theology (ThD) from United Theological College awarded in 2003, a master’s degree in Statistics, and a master’s degree in International Commercial Law. Dr Wright is currently a candidate for two additional PhDs, in Law and Applied Mathematics.
- Aaron Goldstein, Gambling911.com
