Accomplices in the Qian Zhimin case return £5.6 million to the UK government

According to The Daily Mail, Malaysian national Hok Seng Ling, 48, who acted as the "handler" for Chinese fraudster Zhimin Qian, has fully paid the £5,603,305 required under a confiscation order to the UK government, along with £1,990 in interest, most of which comprises cryptocurrency seized upon his arrest. This information comes from a Freedom of Information request submitted by The Daily Mail to the UK's Crown Prosecution Service (CPS). Ling was sentenced to four years and 11 months in prison last November for assisting in money laundering. Between 2014 and 2017, Qian defrauded over 128,000 Chinese investors through a Ponzi scheme, converted the illicit funds into Bitcoin, and fled to the UK. The total amount involved was approximately £5.5 billion, making it the largest money laundering case in British history. The 61,000 Bitcoins seized by the Metropolitan Police are currently valued at roughly £3.8 billion and are held in a UK government account.