Woman who tried to smuggle £1,900,000 out of UK in suitcases jailed

Tara Hanlon, a 30-year-old recruitment consultant, claimed she was going on a ‘girls’ trip’

A woman who committed money-laundering offences related to more than £5 million in cash has been jailed for two years and 10 months.

Tara Hanlon, 30, was caught at Heathrow while trying to board a flight to Dubai with more than £1.9 million in banknotes stuffed into five suitcases last year.

She told a customs official she was going on a ‘girls’ trip’ and needed all the luggage because she ‘wasn’t sure what to wear’, but the cash was found vacuum-packed and covered in ground coffee to hide the smell from sniffer dogs.

Hanlon had already smuggled £3.5 million to Dubai across three trips that summer, which British police only learned of through Emirati authorities because she declared the cash on arrival.

She earned £3,000 for each trip she made, on top of the salary she was earning while furloughed from her job as a recruitment consultant in Leeds, Isleworth Crown Court heard.

In text messages showed to jurors she suggested the money was going towards paying off debts.

Hanlon was taking orders from a Dubai-based woman named Michelle Clerk, whom she had met four years earlier in Leeds and who later told her to set up a company for her hairdressing work so an accountant could ‘clean her money up’.

Other messages indicated she was trying to recruit other smugglers for Michelle, describing the job as a ‘perfect life – a few days in the sun and a few at home’.

The cash was found stuffed into five suitcases as Hanlon tried to board her flight (Picture: PA)

Hanlon was jailed for nearly three years after admitting three counts of removing criminal property from the country

She admitted three counts of removing criminal property from England and Wales relating to the cash she flew out in July and August.

She was found guilty of attempting to remove criminal property relating to the 1.9 million sum she took to the airport in October.

Stephen Grattage, defending, claimed that Hanlon was vulnerable at the time of the offences following the sudden death of her mother in March and having been furloughed from her job shortly afterwards.

During sentencing, Judge Karen Holt told her: ‘Although you were vulnerable at the time, I don’t find that you have been exploited and find that you knew what you were doing.’

Hanlon pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to remove criminal property between July 13 and October 4, a charge which has been left to lie on file.

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