London’s Metropolitan Police force has concluded a seven-year investigation into an international money laundering scheme. It has led to the conviction of two people and the seizure of 61,000 bitcoin, currently worth around $7 billion, as well as encrypted devices, cash and gold.
UK Fraud Case Highlights International Transfer Utility of Cryptocurrencies
2 October 2025 - 14:36 CEST
“This is one of the largest money laundering cases in UK history and among the highest-value cryptocurrency cases globally,” said Will Lyne, The Met’s Head of Economic and Cybercrime Command.
Cross-border crimes
The story has been all over the news, both because of the scale of the crime and because of a diplomatic and legal tussle over the money. One of the perpetrators, Zhimin Qian, is a Chinese national and the root of the money was a Ponzi scheme in China involving the defrauding of over 128,000 victims in China. As a result, there is a discussion between the UK and China about who should keep the proceeds; it will be settled in a case currently in the UK High Court.
Zhimin Qian and Hok Seng Ling used their illicit proceeds to acquire Bitcoin, then sought to launder the money by purchasing property in the UK and Dubai.
The story highlights a key utility of cryptocurrencies: international money transfers.
In this case, that feature was used nefariously, to move funds from China to the UK. “Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are increasingly being used by organised criminals to disguise and transfer assets,” said Robin Weyell, Deputy Chief Crown Prosecutor for the Crown Prosecution Service.
Facilitating international transfers
While this case highlights the borderless nature of cryptocurrencies in a negative way, it also shows the new ways of working cryptocurrencies can deliver: the same transfer utility also applies to legal international transactions.
Cryptocurrencies have the potential to streamline all payments and to shake up the remittance industry, which is particularly important for the world’s 1.7 billion unbanked adults.
International transfers currently cost money and take time. Costs vary, though they are typically in the range of 6-12%. Processing times also vary, with several days not being unusual. In contrast, transferring cryptocurrencies does incur fees, but generally under 5%. And a transaction can take minutes.
As venture capitalist Marc Andreesen said last year in the New York Times, “Bitcoin gives us, for the first time, a way for one Internet user to transfer a unique piece of digital property to another Internet user, such that the transfer is guaranteed to be safe and secure, everyone knows that the transfer has taken place, and nobody can challenge the legitimacy of the transfer. The consequences of this breakthrough are hard to overstate.”
Growing acceptance of crypto for payments
It is also important to remember Bitcoin is just one coin, albeit a prominent one.
The Governor of the Bank of England, Andrew Bailey, has been cool about cryptocurrencies. But he wrote in the Financial Times on Wednesday about “stablecoins being used at scale for payments and settlement in the real economy”, and the potential stablecoins have “in driving innovation in payments systems both at home and across borders.”
The crypto market is dominated by stories about people using it as an investment. However, this story highlights a real-world use that could have a significant impact.
