Chinese fraud victims still owed about £600 million may miss out on gains from a UK Bitcoin (BTC) haul worth £3.8 Billion (or $5 billion). A London judge ruled Chinese law, not English law, governs their claims to the 61,000 coins.
The ruling does not settle who owns the coins. It decides which law applies, and what Chinese law allows has not yet been tested in court.
Why Does Chinese Law Hurt the Victims’ Claim?
Mr Justice Turner ruled on October 12 in the High Court, which hears major civil cases in England and Wales. The victims are claiming under the Proceeds of Crime Act 2002, the UK law used to take back criminal assets.
Under that law, each victim must prove the coins are their property. The judgment states that being owed money, as a creditor, is not enough.
English law could have offered a route, because its trust rules can follow stolen money into assets it later bought. The judge, however, found the sales pitch, the payments, and the coin purchases all happened in China.
“Those dealings were overwhelmingly centred in China,” Judge Turner stated.
How Much Did Victims Lose, and Who Keeps the Rest?
Court records show the scheme raised about 40.2 billion yuan (£4.1 billion) between 2014 and 2017. Roughly 34.1 billion yuan was paid back, though not every investor received money.
That leaves about 6.1 billion yuan unreturned, or roughly £600 million at the judgment’s own exchange rate. By contrast, at a live Bitcoin price near $83,143, the seized coins are worth about $5.1 billion.
Coins that no victim proves to own can be taken by the state through civil recovery. If victims rank only as creditors, most of the coins’ value could stay with UK authorities.
Scheme operator Zhimin Qian was jailed for more than 11 years in November 2025, after pleading guilty in a record Bitcoin seizure case. Fieldfisher, the victims’ lead law firm, plans to appeal, the Financial Times reported.
Last year, BeInCrypto asked what the UK will do with the coins. This ruling narrows the victims’ path to them.
