Cover Story: How Billions in Bitcoin Laundered From China Ended Up in British Hands

It’s hard to square how a high roller who lived in a villa, spent tens of thousands of pounds on luxuries, and even bought properties worth more than half a million pounds in Dubai could have once been a worker living above a Chinese restaurant in the U.K.

The person who experienced this change of fortunes was Wen Jian, a 42-year-old from Hendon in North London, who was found to have participated in what the British Metropolitan police described as the largest Bitcoin money laundering case in U.K. history, resulting in the seizure of 61,000 bitcoins, now worth approximately 31 billion yuan ($4.3 billion).