so much for western union.victoria mutual anyone lol


BBC NEWS | England | South Yorkshire | Paper trail that snared 'Yardies'

Paper trail that snared 'Yardies'
By Ben Ando
BBC News, Sheffield


Without a newsagent's painstaking record keeping, a Jamaican drugs gang sentenced on Thursday over a money laundering scam might have escaped justice.



It was a routine raid on a drab terraced home in Sheffield.

But what police found in the house on Dundas Road, Tinsley, in August 2003 sparked an investigation that would take them half way round the world.

And it would end with the conviction of key members of one of Sheffield's most notorious "Yardie" gangs.

In that first raid, police seized crack cocaine and heroin with a street value of £30,000. They also arrested Keidsha Williams - who was subsequently jailed.



What they also found were a number of carbon paper "customer copies" of money transfer receipts from a Western Union agent in the Pitsmoor area of Sheffield.

Surveillance operation



When other raids yielded similar receipts, detectives decided to take a closer look at this agent.


He was Rajia Iqbal and his shop was known as Spital Hill News.



This sends a message to Jamaican criminals coming across here to take wealth out of the country through drug dealing
Det Insp Andy Bishop




From the outside, it was nondescript; yet records showed that in one typical period - October to December 2004 - this agent was responsible for 11% of the all the money sent via moneygram to Jamaica from the UK.



It outstripped all other individual shops - including those in Brixton and St Paul's, Bristol - its nearest rival managing just 2%.

By now, detectives were suspicious so they mounted a three-month surveillance operation.

Everyone coming into the shop was filmed and duplicates of all the money transfers were obtained.



Soon, a pattern began to emerge. And though many of the names on the bills were unfamiliar, the faces were all too well-known to the police. On January 5 2005, Rajia Iqbal was arrested and questioned.

A few weeks later, the police commandeered a hangar at Sheffield Airport for a dawn briefing before another series of raids.

Pattern

It was the only secure area considered large enough for the number of officers required for the coming operations, in which a large number of search warrants were carried out and numerous people arrested.

Over the coming months a huge mass of evidence was gathered. One officer, Det Con Andy Lintern, was responsible for following the paper trail from the UK to Jamaica.


He alone had to sort through about 18,000 separate money order forms; searching for a pattern and cross referencing on each occasion. Among the items seized were photographs showing luxurious houses.


Many of those arrested were Jamaican nationals, and with the help of the police based at Kingston, detectives managed to trace the owners of some of these houses.

It later emerged that one home had been bought by one of the accused while he was on remand in prison.


Undercover officers filmed the homes and located ownership documents; a key part of the case was to track, and seize, as many of the proceeds of the crimes as possible.

None of the cases would have stuck without the reams of paperwork recovered from Mr Iqbal's money transfer shop.

Every receipt had been meticulously filed; every name preserved, to await discovery by the police.

police have a job to do true

but what i dont get is what do they do with these homes they cease. because i do not see mary whitehouse taking up residents amongst locals.

Police and Government auctions.

Not well advertised but they're out there.