Dirty money kingpin who got Kim Kardashian lookalike and 35 others to fly £100m cash to Dubai jailed

A money laundering kingpin who got Kim Kardashian lookalike, 31, and 35 others to fly more than £100m cash to Dubai has been jailed. Abdulla Alfalasi, 47, has been jailed for more than nine years.

He recruited dozens of couriers to fly suitcases stuffed with bank notes out of the country on business class flights between April 2019 and November 2020. The mules were paid between £3,000 and £8,000 a time.

The scam was rumbled when Tara Hanlon, 31, was stopped at Heathrow Airport on October 3 2020 carrying luggage containing wads of bank notes in vacuum-packed bags totalling £1.9 million. Judge Simon Davis said: "There is no doubt that this was a considerable network under your charge, not your sole charge, you were a principal but it is clear that there were others involved."You were involved in facilitating the removal of a vast amount of cash from this country, through Heathrow Airport, to Dubai.

"You used yourself on a number of occasions as well as a network of 36 hired couriers, who were given somewhere around £3,000 plus expenses per trip and covered with a letter from a company with which you were intimately involved, called Omnivest Gold Trading, to vest this criminal enterprise with a veiled cloak of legitimacy."

Last year, Hanlon, who admitted money-laundering offences relating to more than £5 million, was jailed for 34 months. Senior investigating officer Ian Truby said: "Cash is the lifeblood of organised crime groups which they reinvest into activities such as drug trafficking, which fuels violence and insecurity around the world.

"Disrupting the supply of illicit cash is a priority for the NCA and our partners. The investigation is ongoing and we will do all we can to bring further offenders to book." 

Reference: Birmingham Mail: MoneyJames Rodger