Men from £2m Post Office money laundering gang jailed

Four members of a gang who laundered more than £2m of cash through Post Offices have been jailed.

The criminals used a network of 30 Post Offices across Bristol and Gloucestershire to deposit up to £20,000 at a time, Bristol Crown Court heard.

On Friday, Patrick White, 31, from Spa Road and Thomas Dainty, 31, from Abbeymead, both in Gloucester, were the last members of the gang to be sentenced after pleading guilty to money laundering.

Gang leader Giuseppe Sangiovanni was jailed for six years and eight months in April for the same crime. Detectives said Sangiovanni lived a luxury lifestyle after they found a Porsche and a collection of Rolex watches at his Cheltenham home.

White and Dainty were also jailed for drug dealing crimes, which were unrelated to the money laundering. Both admitted being concerned in the supply of cocaine, and Dainty also pleaded guilty to supplying cannabis.

Dainty was jailed for two years and nine months, while White was sentenced to three years and eight months.

Sangiovanni ran the operation and recruited a gang to launder about £2.2m, the court was told.

He controlled all of the bank accounts and cryptocurrency - a digital only form of currency.

When police arrested him, they discovered that he had expensive tastes.

Peter Highway, the senior investigating officer at South West Regional Organised Crime Unit (SWROCU), said: "We found clear evidence of a luxury lifestyle. He was driving a Porsche. He had six Rolex watches. His wardrobe was full of designer clothes.

"We found evidence in his bank accounts that he'd been to some of the top London restaurants and thought nothing of spending a few hundred pounds on a meal for himself. He had spent money on luxury holidays abroad and all of this at a time when he had no legitimate income."

In June 2021, police traced one of the gang visiting Post Offices in Bristol, sometimes on a scooter, to deposit £60,000.

Det Nick Bishop from the SWROCU said that when the money was deposited, the account holder then converted the money to a cryptocurrency account.

"That account had already been set up by Sangiovanni and it was under his control. He would then send it into an unidentified cryptocurrency wallet," he said.

Once in the crypto wallet, the trail ran out. Police found another £1.4m in bank accounts used by the gang that they could not account for and believe all of the cash came from drugs.

Highway said: "That's the nature of money laundering. You get somebody else to clean the money for you and they don't know where the money has come from but they know its criminal.

"There was intelligence that there was a build-up of cash from drug supply and after restrictions from covid eased that cash had to get back into the system and I believe this organisation was set up to do just that."

Sara Buffin from Gloucester was one of the recruits. She was jailed for three years for laundering more than £1m. Police found photos of bundles of thousands of pounds of cash on her phone.

The other members of the gang, Steven Smith, Lee Edwards, Haig Wilson and Michael Chapman were all given suspended sentences at an earlier date.

The National Economic Crime Centre estimates that hundreds of millions of pounds are laundered through Post Offices every year.

In this case police say it highlighted a potential weakness at the time in terms of how Post Office staff dealt with concerns of potential money laundering.

Since then, the Financial Conduct Authority has brought out a raft of measures to tackle money laundering at post offices, including more training for staff to spot suspicious activity and limiting the amount of cash that can be deposited.

A Post Office spokesperson said their operators, in line with the mandatory training they receive, play an important part in identifying suspicious activity.

"We play a full role in law enforcement and industry initiatives to tackle and prevent money laundering," they added.

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