Man to repay £60,000 after £12m money laundering scam

A Renfrewshire man who was heavily involved in a £12m money laundering scam made £80,000 from his life of crime.

Ronald Russell, 47, ended up playing a vital role in organised crime because he struggled to find work after losing his job.

However, the High Court in Glasgow heard his rise to the upper echelons was halted after a Turkish lorry driver was stopped for a random search at the Port of Felixstowe in Suffolk on 30 March 2023.

Almost £230,000 was discovered stuffed inside a mattress in the cab of the vehicle - and among the cash was a £20 note with Russell's palm print on it. The discovery led to a raid on his home, where he tried to flush evidence down a toilet.

Prosecutors launched a proceeds of crime action against Russell after he pleaded guilty last year to a charge of being involved in serious organised crime.

The 47-year-old had also been linked to a piece of a paper with handwritten notes found in the HGV.

Lawyers for both the Crown and Russell told judge Michael O'Grady KC that they had now agreed to settle the matter.

Prosecutor Carla Fraser told the judge that lawyers were agreed that Russell had made £80,000 from his life of crime. However, he only had £59,050 of that available at this point in time.

At earlier proceedings, Lady Hood jailed Russell, from Linwood, and told him: "You were made redundant and struggled to find employment.

"When it was suggested that, for personal profit, you should record the movement of money, you agreed despite stating (in a pre-sentencing report) that it was obvious it was not legal.

"You said, very frankly, that you did not really care. It seems your account of the offending was, at times, evasive and contradictory."

The court heard how the lorry driver had been stopped by UK Border Force officials, while the swoop at Russell's home by Police Scotland and the National Crime Agency happened almost a year later on 20 March 2024.

He had asked who was at his door and when told it was police, he raced back upstairs.

Russell's partner eventually let the officers in.

Prosecutor Lindsey Dalziel told the court: "Russell was found in the main bathroom kneeling by the toilet with his arm inside the bowl.

"He was trying to dispose of pieces of paper from an A4 notepad at his side. A total of 26 pieces of damaged paper in the form of ledger notes were retrieved from the U-bend."

The notes were dried off and seized along with the pad. The papers documented the movement of large-scale cash over the course of a year.

She added that the handwriting was the same as on the notes found in the Turkish trucker's lorry.

Ledger papers discovered in Russell's home had columns marked "in", "out" and "totals" while there was also reference to payments being made to Shug - an alias for Russell.

Dalziel said the total money marked as moving "in" was £11,890,649.

The "out" column was £11,186,649.

Dalziel said Russell accepted he was including a "wage" of £42,210 paid to himself under the name Shug between March 2023 and March 2024.

"This was in various instalments, which averaged around £4,000," she said.

The notes revealed that handovers of cash ranged between £100,000 and £465,000.

It is not known if the cash mentioned was linked to any other "commodity" such as drugs.

On Monday, judge O'Grady passed an order which compels Russell to hand over £59,050 to prosecutors.