A “Mr Big” was caught in Dundee in a Mercedes containing nearly £50,000 as part of a major police operation, a court heard.
Alleged crime boss Wai Ma has since disappeared but an associate wept as she was jailed for laundering money for him.
Stirling University student Xiaotong Huang, 28, laundered nearly £85,000 for the “Mr Big”, who travelled round Scotland in a Mercedes handing bags of cash to associates to clean.
He was described as the “main nominal” in a “significant” money laundering racket targeted by a police in a probe codenamed Operation Skipper.
Ma had already been under surveillance for weeks when police swooped on his car in Session Street, Dundee in April 2021.
He was in the driver’s seat, had three passengers, and nearly £50,000 in cash in the boot and rear footwell, much of it in a Morrisons supermarket carrier bag.
He has since absconded.
‘Naive and exploited’
Stirling Sheriff Court was told for nearly two years, Huang, who was studying for a masters’ in publishing, paid the money into her bank accounts, transferred sums, purchased “high value luxury items”, and used crime cash to pay her university tuition and accommodation fees.
Solicitor Advocate Calum Weir, defending, said Huang had been “naive and to some extent exploited”.
He asked for her to be given a non-custodial sentence so she could return to her parents in Beijing – described as people “of more than adequate means”.
But jailing Huang for 18 months, Sheriff Keith O’Mahony said he was not persuaded there was any appropriate disposal than custody.
He noted, though: “I do accept she’s not at the top of the tree.”
Huang, who was appearing for sentence after being found guilty at Falkirk Sheriff Court in March, sobbed uncontrollably as she was led, handcuffed, to the cells.
Wad of notes ‘an inch and a half thick’
On April 6 2021, police watched as Huang got into Ma’s Mercedes in a car park near her halls of residence in Wellgreen, Stirling, before emerging with a brown paper bag, which she took to the travel money section of the nearest Post Office.
She later claimed the bag contained only Chinese dumplings but she was seen taking out a wad of notes “an inch and a half thick” and depositing £3500 in one of four bank accounts she was juggling.
Huang was arrested in her halls of residence on May 5 2021.
An analysis of her accounts showed that between June 2019 and April 2021 she had banked more than £160,400 at the Santander, Monzo and Starling banks – some £56,000 of that in cash.
More than £32,000 had been transferred abroad and £31,000 had been used to pay the University of Stirling for tuition fees and accommodation.
More than £37,000 had been used to purchase high value goods from designers and retailers including Gucci, Lancome, Burberry, Louis Vuitton, Harvey Nichols, Harrods and House of Fraser.
£7k of wine bought in one day
Huang pled not guilty to laundering money in connection with serious organised crime.
She claimed she had got the money from her deceased fiancee, then living in Germany, from Chinese fellow students who had since returned to China and from her parents.
After a six-day trial, a jury unanimously found her guilty of laundering £84,912.
The prosecution had originally claimed she had laundered nearly £300,000, reduced to £160,000 at the start of the trial.
None of the luxury goods, including £7000 worth of wine bought in a single day and sent back to China, were ever recovered.
Prosecutor Colin Wilson said there was no legitimate explanation for the “sheer amount of cold hard cash” Huang had.
He said the inference she knew the criminal origin of the cash was irresistible, and she had “tried to divert the jury’s attention with homemade dumplings”.
For the latest court cases across Tayside and Fife, join our Courts Facebook page.
