A former model is facing jail after she stashed £5m cash in her luggage to Dubai as part of a huge smuggling ring.
Jo Emma Larvin, 44, was part of a gang involved in one of the biggest money laundering cases ever in Britain, flying millions of pounds in crooked money from the UK to the UAE. Beatrice Auty, 26, and Larvin's current partner, Jonathan Johnson, 55, as well as Amy Harrison, 27, were all found guilty of money laundering on Tuesday, April 25.
So far 11 couriers have been convicted over the shipments of cash that were vacuum packed and hidden in suitcases on long-haul flights from Heathrow. The ring smuggled more than £104m from the UK to Dubai in 83 separate trips between November 2019 and October 2020.
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Ringleader Abdullah Alfalsi, 47, who was jailed for more than nine years in July last year, oversaw the operation. The couriers, who were paid around £3,000 for each trip, were booked on business class flights due to the extra luggage allowance.
Gang bosses communicated with the couriers and arranged the shipments on a WhatsApp group called "Sunshine and lollipops", according to the National Crime Agency (NCA). Cash from criminal gangs around the UK was collected by the crew, believed to be the profits of drug dealing, and taken to counting houses - usually rented apartments in central London.
The money was then vacuum packed into tens of thousands of pounds and separated into suitcases which would usually each contain around £500,000, weighing around 40kg. They were also sprayed with coffee or air fresheners in bid to stop them being found by sniffer dogs at the airport.
Larvin made two trips to Dubai in August and September 2020 - one with Harrison when they took seven cases between them containing £2.2m and another with her partner Jonathan Johnson, when they took eight suitcases containing £2.8m. Harrison made three trips between July and September 2020 - taking 15 suitcases containing around £6m.
Ex-glamour model Larvin dated Welsh boxing legend Joe Calzaghe for six years, until they broke up in 2009. In court, Larvin and Johnson claimed they were flying out millions of pounds for the UAE Embassy.
Dubai national Alfalasi, who arranged for British cash mules to travel from the UK to his homeland, was arrested at his upmarket flat in Lowndes Square, Belgravia, when he visited London in December 2021. Auty was arrested following NCA raids in May 2021, while Larvin and Johnson were taken into custody at Manchester Airport last March.
At Isleworth Crown Court, Auty, from Fulham, west London, Johnson and Larvin, both from Ripon in North Yorkshire, plus Amy Harrison, of Worcester Park, south west London, were all found guilty by a jury.
Adrian Searle, director of the National Economic Crime Centre in the NCA, said: “The laundering of such vast quantities of cash around the globe enables organised criminals and corrupt elites to clean or hide their ill-gotten gains. Cash smugglers typically work on behalf of International Controller Networks, who move the finances of the international drug trade, people traffickers, fraudsters and other criminal groups, making the source of the money difficult to trace.
“The criminality this enables costs the UK billions every year, causes misery and ruins lives across the world. This case demonstrates the continued commitment by the NCA to crackdown on money laundering and close the vulnerabilities being exploited.”
Five other couriers have already pleaded guilty at previous court hearings and will be sentenced at a later date, along with those convicted on Tuesday.
NCA senior investigating officer Ian Truby added after the latest guilty verdicts: “These couriers were important cogs in a large money laundering wheel. The crime group they belonged to was responsible for smuggling eye-watering amounts of criminal cash out of the UK.
“This simply wouldn’t have been possible without couriers doing their bidding, in return for a sunshine holiday and a slice of the profit. Cash is the lifeblood of organised crime groups, which they re-invest into activities such as drug trafficking.
“This fuels violence and insecurity around the world, which is why our investigation into other cash couriers continues.”
Other couriers are still being investigated and more arrests and court cases could take place in the future, the NCA said. The four defendants convicted this week will be sentenced at the same court on a date to be decided.
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