UK court ruling boosts government’s chances of keeping $5 billion in seized bitcoin

A London court has strengthened the U.K. government’s chances of keeping most of 3.8 billion pounds ($5 billion) in seized bitcoin BTC $83,696.96 , after ruling that thousands of Chinese fraud victims cannot use English law to claim coins. The decision concerns 61,000 BTC seized by London’s Metropolitan Police in its investigation into Zhimin Qian, who pleaded guilty to defrauding thousands of people in China . Qian ran a massive Ponzi scheme through her company, Tianjin Lantian Gerui Electronic Technology, defrauding over 128,000 investors between 2014 and 2017. She converted the stolen billions into bitcoin and fled to the U.K.