The foreign ministry of China has been contacted by a group of Chinese victims of a $6 billion scam to help them retrieve 61,000 bitcoins that were taken from a scammer and her accomplice. Attempts to give the British government ownership of these bitcoins have been met with fierce opposition from the victims of fraud.
Petitioners Receive Over 2,500 Signatures
The foreign ministry of China has received a request from a group of Chinese victims of a $6 billion fraud operation run by Tianjin Lantian Gerui Electronic Technology for help in reclaiming over 61,000 bitcoins that were allegedly purchased using their money. According to reports, the group made a similar request to China’s public security ministry and has amassed over 2,500 signatures.
The 61,000 bitcoins were found after a 2018 raid on the homes of British-Chinese lady Jian Wen and her employer, Zhimin Qian, according to a report by Bitcoin.com News. Qian has since disappeared, but Wen was detained and was found guilty of money laundering by a British court recently.
The group is reportedly pressuring relevant Chinese officials to communicate with U.K. legal departments and to provide “evidence” to back up their claim to the bitcoins that have been confiscated, according to a Financial Times investigation. According to reports, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) of the United Kingdom has started legal actions to seize the bitcoins.
If no one steps forward to claim the cryptocurrency, this process may end in the police receiving half of the seized bitcoins and the Home Office receiving the other half. Nonetheless, the victims strongly objected to attempts to give the UK government ownership of the bitcoins in a letter they submitted to the two Chinese ministries.
“Time is of the essence. The fraud victims declared, “We do not want, and will never accept, a situation where bitcoins are confiscated by the U.K. and not returned to us.”
A task force has been established by Chinese officials in response to a fraudulent scam that allegedly drew in over 207,000 investors. According to reports, the task force has returned $309 million, or 8% and 5% of the victims’ invested capital, from the fraudulent entity’s seized assets.
This sum, however, is far less than the value of the bitcoins that were recovered or the more than $6.2 billion that investors lost.
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