On Tuesday, the most recent woman to earn the nickname “Crypto Queen†from the media received an 11-year sentence associated with a Ponzi scheme she previously ran in China in the 2010s. Zhimin Qian is said to have converted much of the proceeds from the scheme into bitcoin when the cryptocurrency was only worth a few thousand dollars as she fled the country and eventually ended up in the United Kingdom.

According to Reuters, Qian used her company Lantian Gerui to operate her Ponzi scheme from around 2014 to 2017, promising investors high returns through high-tech health products and cryptocurrency mining operations. The scheme is said to have targeted over 128,000 people across China, particularly middle-aged and elderly individuals, sometimes through lavish events that encouraged investment in the fraud, according to the BBC.

The operation was a classic Ponzi structure, using funds from new investors to pay small daily returns to earlier ones, amassing deposits exceeding 40 billion yuan (about $5.6 billion) while siphoning off around 6 billion yuan for Qian’s personal gain. These sorts of schemes have been prevalent in Bitcoin since the cryptocurrency’s earliest days, including the infamous Bitcoin Savings & Trust that operated purely on the only forum for online discussion about Bitcoin at the time in 2011.

Here’s police arresting Zhimin Qian in her bed for £4 billion fraud https://t.co/q8YNJo1Izy pic.twitter.com/Ai7I1LTNmO

— CourtNewsUK (@CourtNewsUK) November 11, 2025

By mid-2017, the facade began to crumble as payouts to investors abruptly halted, prompting a Chinese police investigation into the fraudulent activities. In September 2017, Qian fled China using a fake passport, traveling through various countries in Southeast Asia before arriving in the U.K. She settled into a luxurious lifestyle in London, renting a mansion for over £17,000 per month and posing as a wealthy heiress from the world of antiques and diamonds.

Qian hired an assistant, Wen Jian, to help convert her massive bitcoin holdings into cash and other assets, including attempts to purchase high-value properties that raised suspicions and triggered a U.K. police probe. When Qian was arrested, U.K. authorities seized more than 61,000 Bitcoin, now valued at over $6 billion.

In September 2025, Qian pleaded guilty to money laundering charges at Southwark Crown Court in London, admitting to possessing and transferring criminal property. During her sentencing, the judge described her as the architect of the fraud driven by “pure greed.â€

A civil case to determine the fate of the seized assets is set to follow, potentially allowing Chinese victims to claim restitution.

Not the First Billionaire ‘Crypto Queen’

Throughout the young technology’s short history, multiple women have leveraged the allure of digital wealth to orchestrate massive frauds, earning them the moniker “Crypto Queen.â€

The OG “crypto queen†is Ruja Ignatova, who founded OneCoin in 2014. Promising a revolutionary alternative to Bitcoin, Ignatova marketed OneCoin as a legitimate cryptocurrency that would make investors rich through multi-level marketing.

However, OneCoin was a classic Ponzi scheme with no real blockchain or tradable value, relying on new investments to pay returns to earlier participants. By 2017, the scam had defrauded victims worldwide out of an estimated $4 billion, targeting vulnerable populations in countries like China, Uganda, and Pakistan. Ignatova vanished in October 2017 after boarding a flight from Sofia to Athens, amid growing investigations.

She was added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted list in 2022, with a $5 million reward available to those who assist with her capture, and rumors persist of her possible murder by organized crime figures in 2018. Others say she is hiding in Russia.

More recently, another figure dubbed the “Queen of Crypto†emerged in the form of Valeria Fedyakina, a 24-year-old Russian influencer known online as “Bitmama.†In 2023, Fedyakina allegedly used her glamorous social media presence to lure investors into a fraudulent scheme, promising high returns on crypto-related activities.

Russian authorities claimed she scammed at least four victims out of over $22 million, and she eventually received a seven-year prison sentence.

In the U.S., “Hawk Tuah Girl†(real name Hailey Welch) was able to parlay a viral man-on-the-street-style interview response into the launch of a memecoin, which was generally viewed as a quick and easy way for the social media star to cash out on her newfound fame. However, Welch has yet to face any legal repercussions from the launch of her memecoin, as that sort of activity has been explicitly deemed acceptable by the new SEC leadership.

Crypto is the best technology for scamming ever created.

The line between scam and bad idea is sufficiently blurred, and it has a built in mechanism for collecting money from targets.

Great work everyone.

— Kyle Torpey (@kyletorpey) February 3, 2022

While many joke about the prevalence of obvious scams, Ponzi schemes, and pump-and-dump operations in crypto, the sad reality is these sorts of investment cons have taken tens of billions of dollars from people all over the world. And in many cases, it’s a less well-off individual or family placing their entire life savings into a false hope of getting rich quick.