UNITED Kingdom authorities are trying to recover £16.2 million (RM91.7 million) from a Malaysian fixer at the centre of a massive Bitcoin scam, a court was told yesterday.
According to reports, Hok Seng Ling, 47, admitted to money laundering at London's Southwark Crown Court.
Speaking through an interpreter, he just said the word "guilty".
He pleaded guilty at Southwark Crown Court to entering a money laundering arrangement with Yadi Zhang, also 47, on or before 23 April 2024.
Sky News reported that Zhang, who is also known as Zhimin Qian, first arrived in the UK on a false St Kitts and Nevis passport in September 2017 after allegedly carrying out a UK£5b investment scam in China involving 130,000 investors in fraudulent wealth schemes between 2014 and 2017.
She was arrested in York in April last year after spending years on the run following the discovery of more than 61,000 Bitcoin in digital wallets in a raid of her UK£5m six-bedroom rented house near Hampstead Heath, in north London.
According to AFP, Ling, who had been living in Derbyshire in central England, had dealt in cryptocurrency on behalf of Qian with confiscation proceedings now underway to try to recover millions of pounds, the court heard.
The amount could be adjusted when the two are sentenced at a two-day hearing set for Nov 10 and 11.
Qian had pleaded guilty on Monday to acquiring and possessing criminal property, namely cryptocurrency, following what is believed to be the single largest cryptocurrency seizure in the world, now worth about 5.5 billion pounds.
Last year, as part of the same seven-year investigation, a third person, accomplice Jian Wen, was jailed for six years and eight months for her role in the criminal operation.
Jian Wen, 43, was jailed for six years and eight months last year after being found guilty of one count of money laundering between October 2017 and January 2022 relating to 150 Bitcoin, now worth around £12.5m.
The court heard how the two women travelled the world, spending tens of thousands of pounds on designer clothes, jewellery and shoes.
Ling is alleged to have replaced Jian Wen as Zhang's "butler", organising helpers and booking Airbnbs, including in Scotland, for the fugitive.
According to Sky News, police found Zhang after carrying out surveillance of Ling and seized assets including encrypted devices, cash, gold, and cryptocurrency.
Metropolitan Police said the case is "one of the largest money laundering cases in UK history and among the highest-value cryptocurrency cases globally". – October 1, 2025
