Ripon couple convicted after smuggling cash in suitcases on flights to Dubai as part of £100 million money laundering network

Eleven members of a network who laundered more than £100m by smuggling it out of the UK to Dubai have now been convicted.

Jonathan Johnson, 55, and Jo Emma Larvin, 44, both from Ripon, Beatrice Auty, 26, from London, and Amy Harrison, 27, from Worcester Park in Surrey, were all convicted at Isleworth Crown Court yesterday.

Their network smuggled more than £104 million from the United Kingdom to Dubai during 83 separate trips between November 2019 and October 2020, overseen by ringleader Abdullah Alfalsi, 47, who was jailed for more than nine years in July last year.

Adrian Searle, Director of the National Economic Crime Centre at the National Crime Agency, 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.”

The couriers, who were paid around £3,000 for each trip and would be booked on business class flights due to the extra luggage allowance, communicated on a WhatsApp group entitled ’Sunshine and Lollipops’.

Larvin, from Ripon, made two trips to Dubai in August and September 2020; one with Amy Harrison when they took seven cases between them containing £2.2 million and another with her partner Jonathan Johnson, when they took eight suitcases containing £2.8 million.

Larvin and Johnson were both arrested at Manchester Airport in March 2022.

The network collected cash from criminal groups around the UK, which was believed to be the profits of drug dealing, and took it to counting houses, usually rented apartments in Central London.

The money was then vacuum packed and separated into suitcases which would typically each contain around £500,000, weighing around 40 kilos.

They were sprayed with coffee or air fresheners in an effort to prevent them being found by Border Force detection dogs.

Ian Truby, Senior Investigating Officer at the National Crime Agency, said: “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.”

Five other couriers have pleaded guilty at previous hearings and will be sentenced at a later date, along with those convicted yesterday, while a number of other couriers remain under investigation.