A corrupt airline check-in attendant at Manchester Airport helped a crime family smuggle almost £30m in cash out of the UK in suitcases on board Emirates flights, a court has heard.
Hundreds of thousands of pounds were flown out at a time on Dubai-bound flights from Manchester, Birmingham and Brussels airports between December 2017 and November 2019, with up to five suitcases used per trip.
In October 2018, check-in desk attendant Emma Rauf, 34, and her brother Ben Royle, 32, collected £406,500 in criminal cash and left it in the boot of her car, which was parked on their parents’ driveway in Peel Avenue, Hale.
Mother Heather Jeffrey, 58, her son Sheldan Noel, 30, and her daughter Lamara Noel, 34, all from Bradford, smuggled out a combined total of more than £11 million in cash picked up from criminal groups in northern England.
Along with other couriers, they concealed hundreds of thousands of pounds inside clothes in suitcases before taking it out of the UK without declaring it on departure.
Rauf, an Emirates employee, waved through suitcases full of cash as they were smuggled on to flights at Manchester Airport, despite them being over the weight limit.
After someone broke into the car and stole the cash, the alleged organiser of the operation — who cannot be named as he awaits extradition to the UK to face trial — asked the siblings to take lie detector tests to prove they had not taken it.
Later that month, a gunman sprayed their parents’ home with bullets, though nobody was inside at the time.
CCTV captured the moment couriers Devanyl Graham, 26, from Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, and Sophie Logan, 31, who had been living in Dubai, pushed a total of seven suitcases through Manchester Airport’s Terminal 1 in May 2018.
However, the cash was detected after check-in, resulting in his arrest.
Following a 12-week trial at Bolton Crown Court, a jury convicted Devanyl Graham, Sheldan Noel, Lamara Noel, Heather Jeffrey and Sophie Logan of money laundering on June 4.
Check-in desk attendant Emma Rauf changed her plea to guilty on March 23, while Ben Royle and Sheikh Jobe pleaded guilty at hearings before the trial began.
Logan, Graham, Sheldan Noel, Lamara Noel, Royle, Jeffrey and Jobe are due to be sentenced at the same court on October 1, while Emma Rauf will be sentenced on October 30.
