British police seize $2.36 trillion in BTC from Chinese investment scam, while German police seize $2.1 billion in BTC from piracy site operator

The Metropolitan Police seized more than £1.4 billion ($2.35 trillion) in bitcoin as part of the proceeds of crime linked to a recent massive investment scam in China, a London court has heard. It is the largest seizure of bitcoin criminal proceeds ever made by law enforcement worldwide. The revelation came during the trial of Jian Wen, a Chinese woman accused of helping launder the proceeds of a £5 billion ($8.435 trillion) investment fraud in China. Earlier in the day, British police said they had seized four devices containing more than 61,000 BTC from a safe and a house where the defendant and her employer, Yadi Zhang, the ringleader of the Chinese investment fraud, lived in 2018. When police recovered all of the cryptocurrency in July 2021, the value of the seized bitcoin was reportedly around £1.4 billion. Cointelegraph previously reported that British prosecutors have charged a London-based Chinese woman, Jian Yuan, with helping launder bitcoin funds for the mastermind of an $8.4 trillion Chinese investment fraud.

Meanwhile, German police seized more than $2.1 billion worth of bitcoins (about 50,000) from an operator of a piracy website. One of the two suspects voluntarily handed over the BTC to the police. A money laundering investigation is underway and no formal charges have been filed. Police said they have not yet decided what to do with the bitcoins.