Six defendants, including a senior manager and two drivers of a road haulage company, have been sentenced to prison for running a large-scale money laundering operation involving more than £30 million in cash. Marcus Justin Hughes, the effective operator of Genesis 2014 (Ltd) UK, a road haulage company, was sentenced to 14 years in prison at Stoke Crown Court for two counts of conspiracy to launder money, along with Leon Woolley, the firm’s transport planner, who was sentenced to five and a half years in prison for the same offences. Nicholas Fern and Damion Morgan, both Hughes drivers, were convicted on a single count of conspiracy to launder money over a period of months and sentenced to five and a half years in prison. We learned of a criminal operation to launder money via a haulage company, Genesis 2014 (UK) Ltd. Mr Hughes communicated with a man in Dubai, Craig Johnson, a convicted fraudster from Stoke on Trent, using an encrypted network phone known as Encrochat. They agreed that large sums of cash would be collected on a regular basis in various locations throughout the UK and elsewhere, with the intention of transporting the cash to London, where it could be transferred onwards and legitimised. The size of the cash involved, the lack of any explanation for its origin, and the surrounding circumstances all suggested that the cash was the proceeds of criminal activity. The total cash at stake ranged from £30 million to £45 million, depending on the size of the loads for each journey. The French authorities had hacked into the Encrochat network and reported their findings to the British authorities. On March 26, 2021, two Genesis vans driven by Fern and Morgan were stopped separately, each carrying large amounts of cash. The total cost was around £700,000. Hughes was arrested the same day, and £60,000 in cash was recovered from his home. Extensive phone content revealed the scope and duration of the operation, as well as the fact that Hughes held the Encrochat phone in 2020. It is estimated that the laundering operation involved more than £30 million in cash. Hughes, who had previously been convicted of drug trafficking and VAT fraud, should also not have been operating a haulage company because his operator’s licence had been suspended for five years in 2018. Leon Woolley and Liam Bailey worked in the Genesis Ltd office, and Simon Davies was a business associate of Hughes who was also involved in directing other defendants to transfer criminal proceeds. The defendants were involved in the wholesale haulage of huge quantities of criminal cash totalling more than £30 million,” said Jonathan Kelleher of the CPS. They were an important part of the criminal network’s distribution network, transferring the cash proceeds of criminal activity for the benefit of organised criminals as well as their own gain. “The use of an encrypted Encrochat phone and the communication with criminals in Dubai illustrate the sophisticated methods increasingly used by organised networks, operating across the world. The combined efforts of the Regional Organised Crime Unit for the West Midlands, CPS Serious Economic Organised Crime and International Directorate and instructed counsel, have successfully disrupted this distribution element of the criminal network. The Crown Prosecution Service’s Proceeds of Crime Division will now pursue the defendants in order to deprive them of their own gains from their involvement in organised crime.” “These men were part of a nationally significant Organised Crime Group offering professional money laundering services to criminals up and down the country, and beyond,” said Detective Inspector Jonathan Jones of the West Midlands Regional Organised Crime Unit. Their convictions and sentences will serve as a deterrent to others from engaging in money laundering, which is as heinous as the crimes that generate the money in the first place. The police, CPS Serious Economic Organised Crime and International Directorate, and instructed counsel worked together closely and tirelessly from the start to ensure success in this case. £