Jet-setting cash courier jailed for role in £100m smuggling scheme
Will PayneA criminal cash courier, who played a leading role in a plot to smuggle more than £100 million out of the UK by exploiting extra luggage allowance on business class flights, has been jailed for three-and-a-half years.
Beatrice Auty, 27, from London, was arrested following National Crime Agency (NCA) raids in May 2021, after she travelled from Heathrow to Dubai twice in July and August of that year, checking in seven suitcases containing £3.4 million.
Auty was involved in the logistical arrangements for another 16 trips, helping to pack cash into suitcases, accompanying travellers to Heathrow and collecting empty suitcases when they returned so they could be used again.
Auty and six other members of the money laundering network were sentenced last week after being convicted earlier this year.
The group transported the cash to Dubai during 83 separate trips between November 2019 and October 2020, overseen by ringleader Abdullah Alfalasi, 48, who was jailed for more than nine years in July last year.
The couriers, who were paid around £3,000 for each trip, communicated on WhatsApp groups, including one titled “Sunshine and lollipops”.
Auty was convicted alongside Jonathan Johnson, 55, and Jo Emma Larvin, 44, both from Ripon in North Yorkshire; and Amy Harrison, 28, from Surrey at Isleworth Crown Court on 26 April this year.
At a sentencing hearing last week, Auty was sentenced to 42 months imprisonment, Johnson to 12 months suspended for two years, Larvin to 24 months suspended for two years, Harrison to 24 months suspended for two years, Esson to 22 months suspended for two years and Ilyas to 15 months suspended for two years.
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 work on behalf of international controller networks, who move the finances of the international drug trade, people traffickers, fraudsters and other criminal groups. This case demonstrates the continued commitment to crack down on money laundering and target organised crime groups who cause misery and ruin lives."
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