Six defendants were imprisoned on Friday (6 January) for running a large-scale money laundering operation involving in excess of £30m in cash. 

Marcus Hughes, the effective operator of Genesis 2014 Ltd, a road haulage business, was sentenced to 14 years imprisonment at Stoke Crown Court for two counts of conspiracy to launder cash. 

Leon Woolley, a transport planner at the firm, was sentenced to five and a half years for the same offences. 

Nicholas Fern and Damion Morgan, drivers working for Hughes, were convicted of a single count of conspiracy to launder cash and were sentenced to five and a half years imprisonment each. 

Liam Bailey, another transport planner at the firm, was convicted of one count of conspiracy to launder money and was sentenced to three and a half years. 

Simon Davies, a business associate of Hughes, was also convicted of one count of conspiracy to launder money and was sentenced to eight years. 

The CPS Proceeds of Crime Division will now pursue the defendants to strip them of their own gains from their involvement in organised crime (CPS).

Stoke Crown Court heard how Mr Hughes used an encrypted network phone, known as Encrochat, to communicate with a man in Dubai, Craig Johnson, a convicted fraudster from Stoke-on-Trent. 

They agreed that large sums of cash would be collected at various places in the UK on a regular basis, with the intention of transporting the cash to London where it could be transferred onwards and legitimized. 

The total amount of cash at issue was between £30 million and £45 million depending on the size of the loads for each journey. 

The French authorities had broken into the Encrochat network and reported activity to the British authorities. 

On 26 March 2021, two Genesis vans driven by Nicholas Fern and Damion Morgan were stopped, each containing substantial bags of cash. 

The combined total was around £700,000.

Hughes was arrested the same day and a further £60k in cash recovered from his home. 

Jonathan Kelleher of the CPS said: "The defendants were involved in the wholesale haulage of huge quantities of criminal cash, totalling in excess of £30 million. 

"They were an essential distribution part of the criminal network, transferring the cash proceeds of criminal activity for the wider 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."

Detective Inspector Jonathan Jones of the Regional Organised Crime Unit for the West Midlands said: "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. 

"Their convictions and sentences will be a warning to deter others from involvement in money laundering which is as abhorrent as the crimes that generate the cash in the first place. 

"Close cooperation and tireless effort from the outset between the police, CPS Serious Economic Organised Crime and International Directorate and instructed counsel was the key to success in this case."