An on-chain investigator says he has uncovered a cluster of Bitcoin wallets holding roughly 28,555 BTC, worth about $1.8 billion, that may be linked to one of the largest money laundering cas
An on-chain investigator says he has uncovered a cluster of Bitcoin wallets holding roughly 28,555 BTC, worth about $1.8 billion, that may be linked to one of the largest money laundering cases in UK history.
The finding comes from on-chain analyst Specter, a blockchain investigator who traces the movement of funds across public crypto networks.
In an X post on Aug. 4, the analyst said the trail began a few weeks ago when a Bitcoin wallet dormant since 2017 suddenly moved 1,020 BTC, worth around $60 million, and started scattering the funds across multiple addresses, a pattern often associated with laundering.
Related: After $89M Coldcard hack, Bitcoin breaks from the FTX pattern
Tracing those transfers, the analyst says he arrived at wallet clusters connected to addresses publicly tied to the UK investigation into Qian Zhimin, also known as Yadi Zhang. The wallets he flagged had stayed largely dormant since June 2021.
Qian orchestrated a massive investment fraud in China between 2014 and 2017, defrauding more than 128,000 victims, some of whom lost life savings and pensions, of roughly £600 million ($800 million approximately).
She converted a large share of the proceeds into Bitcoin, fled to the UK on a forged passport, and tried to launder the funds through luxury London property purchases before anti-money-laundering checks tripped her up.
The case produced the largest Bitcoin seizure in the UK, with the Metropolitan Police seizing over 60,000 BTC. In November 2025, Qian was sentenced to 11 years and eight months after pleading guilty to money laundering offences at Southwark Crown Court.
When UK authorities moved the seized Bitcoin in July 2021, those transfers left identifiable links between known addresses and the investigation, the same breadcrumbs the analyst says he followed.
The analyst is careful about what the discovery does and does not prove. Based on the on-chain evidence alone, he says it is impossible to tell whether the wallets remain under the same actors' control, have moved to another custodian, or have already been identified by law enforcement.
Bitcoin was trading at $64,252.37 at the time of writing.
