The UK seized more than £3bn of bitcoins from China.
The group of victims of the £5bn scam perpetrated by the Chinese company Tianjin Lantian Gerui Electronic Technology sent a letter to the Foreign Ministry in Beijing this week asking them to begin negotiations with the UK Government for the recovery of Bitcoin purchased with their money.
The group has collected nearly 2,500 signatures from victims who support the appeal and plans to present them to the relevant ministries.
This request comes after the conviction of British-Chinese Jian Wen in Southwark Crown Court on 1 April for helping her employer Zhimin Qian to convert some bitcoin into cash and jewellery.
Qian stole money from over 128,000 Chinese investors between 2014 and 2017 through a wealth-management fraud, according to UK prosecutors. Qian converted the money to bitcoin before arriving in London under a false name in 2017. Her location is unknown.
During an operation on Qian’s and Wen’s Hampstead mansion, the Metropolitan Police of London seized 61,000 bitcoins worth over £3bn. This was the largest crypto haul ever made by any law enforcement agency in the world.
The victims, who sent a letter that was viewed, asked the Chinese authorities to contact the UK judiciary departments and provide relevant evidence to prove they were “legitimate owner of this enormous amount of Bitcoin”.
It said, “There’s no time to waste.” “We will not accept a situation in which bitcoins are taken by the UK, and then not returned to us.”
The UK authorities haven’t made it clear what they plan to do with the bitcoins that they have seized.
Crown Prosecution Service announced in March that it had obtained a property freeze order from the High Court against Wen, and confiscation will be discussed in September. The CPS stated that it had begun a civil recovery inquiry into the large amount of bitcoin held by Qian. This investigation “could lead” to its forfeiture. However, no timeline was given.
The Home Office and the Police would receive half the money if UK authorities determine that there is no other person entitled to it.
The Metropolitan Police didn’t respond to a comment request, but in March they said that the Chinese authorities hadn’t yet requested to return the money.
The victims group hopes that the UK will begin accepting applications from individuals for money refunds based on the evidence they provided to local Chinese authorities.
Four people who were scammed claim that a task force led by the authorities of Tianjin, where the company had its headquarters, made two payments to victims since May last year to those who registered with the Chinese police.
The company said that 8 and 5 percent of their capital investment had been paid back using assets confiscated by Lantian Gerui, and former employees. These assets were worth 2.8bn ($309mn) in total.
The largest bank in China, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (ICB), is helping the Chinese refund procedure and has estimated the number of investors at 207,000.
In the victim group’s statement, they said that “extremely serious economic losses” had resulted in “family breakdown, separation of their children, debt and no money for treatment”.
“Our voices . . . This property should not have been confiscated by UK, said the child of one victim who did not want to be identified.
She claimed that her mother invested Rmb25mn into a Lantian Gerui after being taken to Japan on a luxury ship by the sales team of the company, but received dividends worth less than half and only Rmb1.6mn back from the Chinese taskforce.
The Chinese Embassy in London didn’t immediately respond to our request for comment.