£100 million-plus money laundering scam leads to multiple convictions

Marcus Justin Hughes, the effective operator of road haulage business Genesis 2014 (UK) Ltd, has been convicted at Stoke Crown Court of one count of conspiracy to launder cash together with Leon Woolley, a transport planner at the firm.

Nicholas Fern and Damion Morgan, both drivers working for Hughes, were convicted of a single count of conspiracy to launder cash over a period of months.

Liam Bailey, another transport planner at the firm, and Simon Davies (a business associate of Hughes) were each convicted of one count of conspiracy to launder money.

The Regional Organised Crime Unit for the West Midlands became aware of a criminal operation to launder cash through a haulage company, namely Genesis 2014 (UK) Ltd. Hughes used an encrypted network phone, known as Encrochat, to communicate with a man in Dubai (specifically 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 and elsewhere on a regular basis with the intention of transporting the cash to London where it could be transferred onwards and legitimised. The scale of cash involved, the lack of any explanation for its provenance and the surrounding circumstances provided “an irresistible inference” that the cash was the proceeds of criminality.

The total amount of cash at issue was between £100 million and £150 million depending on the size of the loads for each journey.

Encrochat network

The French authorities had broken into the Encrochat network and reported activity to the British authorities. On 26 March last year, two Genesis 2014 (UK) Ltd vans driven by Fern and Morgan were stopped separately and each found to contain substantial bags of cash. The combined total involved around £700,000. Hughes was arrested the same day and a further £60,000 in cash was recovered from his home.

Extensive phone content indicated the scale and duration of the operation and established that Hughes had held the Encrochat phone in 2020. In total, it’s estimated the laundering operation involved in excess of £100 million in cash.Hughes, who had previously been convicted of drug trafficking and VAT fraud, should not have been running a haulage business because his operator’s license had been revoked for five years in 2018.

Leon Woolley and Liam Bailey worked in the office at Genesis 2014 (UK) Ltd and Simon Davies was a business associate of Hughes involved in directing other defendants to transfer the cash proceeds of criminality.

Organised crime

Jonathan Kelleher, a specialist prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), said: “The defendants were involved in the wholesale haulage of huge quantities of criminal cash totalling in excess of £100 million. They were an essential distribution element of the criminal network, transferring the cash proceeds of criminal activity for the wider benefit of organised criminals as well as their own gain.”

Kelleher continued: “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, the CPS’ own Serious Economic Organised Crime and International Directorate and instructed counsel have successfully disrupted this distribution element of the criminal network.”

In conclusion, Kelleher noted: “The CPS Proceeds of Crime Division will now pursue the defendants to strip them of their own gains from their involvement in organised crime.”

Significant group

Detective Inspector Jonathan Jones of the Regional Organised Crime Unit for the West Midlands stated: “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 co-operation and tireless effort from the outset between the police, the CPS Serious Economic Organised Crime and International Directorate and instructed counsel was the key to success in this case.”

Further, Jones observed: “£701,685.75 has already been forfeited in civil proceedings from this organised crime group, with half of this amount returning to the Staffordshire Police via the Home Office Asset Recovery Incentivisation Scheme to contribute towards fighting crime in the county.”

The CPS is committed to continue to work alongside law enforcement and bring prosecutions where money launderers are seen to conspire with other criminals to wash clean their ill-gotten gains.

What’s more, the CPS is also committed to working more widely with banks, businesses, charities and beyond to help educate others such that they can avoid becoming the victims of attacks perpetrated by money launderers.