Five women and a man from Yorkshire convicted of being part of 'sunshine and lollipops' Whatsapp smuggling ring that took criminals' cash to Dubai

Eleven of the gang have now been found guilty – including former glamour model Jo-Emma Larvin, 44, and her boyfriend Jonathan Andrew Johnson, 55, from Grantley near Ripon; recruitment executive Tara Hanlon, 32, from Leeds; Nicola Esson, 56, from Swarcliffe, Leeds; Stacey Borg, 41, from Calverley, Pudsey and Megan Reeves, 30, from Hexthorpe, Doncaster.

Their trips to Dubai were organised via Whatsapp – with one group called ‘Sunshine and Lollipops’. Some of the female couriers posed as friends going on a girls’ holiday, and air freshener was sprayed on luggage to fool Border Force sniffer dogs. The network was eventually dismantled by the National Crime Agency, having made 83 separate journeys between 2019 and 2020 to smuggle out £104million in cash. The ringleader Abdullah Alfalsi, 47, was jailed for more than nine years in July last year.

A courier would be paid around £3,000 per trip and had to travel business class due to the amount of luggage they were taking with them. One checked in 18 suitcases containing £6.8million. The money had come from criminal groups, including people traffickers, fraudsters and drugs gangs.

Jo-Emma Larvin made two two trips to Dubai in August and September 2020; one with a courier called Amy Harrison, when they took seven cases between them containing £2.2 million and another with her partner Jonathan Johnson, when they took eight suitcases containing £2.8 million. Larvin and Johnson were arrested at Manchester Airport in March 2022.

The network collected cash from criminal groups around the UK, which was believed to be the profits of drug dealing, and took it to counting houses, usually rented apartments in central London.

The money was then vacuum packed and separated into suitcases which would typically each contain around £500,000, weighing around 40 kilos. They were sprayed with coffee or air fresheners in an effort to prevent them being found by detection dogs.

NCA senior investigating officer Ian Truby said: “These couriers were important cogs in a large money laundering wheel. The crime group they belonged to was responsible for smuggling eye-watering amounts of criminal cash out of the UK.

“This simply wouldn’t have been possible without couriers doing their bidding, in return for a sunshine holiday and a slice of the profit.

“Cash is the lifeblood of organised crime groups, which they re-invest into activities such as drug trafficking. This fuels violence and insecurity around the world, which is why our investigation into other cash couriers continues.”

Larvin and Johnson were convicted this month after a long trial in London. Esson and Borg were arrested in May 2021. Megan Reeves and Tara Hanlon were arrested in October 2020, claiming they were going on holiday, but messages showed Reeves had intended to make 13 trips to clear a £39,000 debt.

All will be sentenced at a later date.