Two people from near Ripon have been found guilty of helping to smuggle more than £100 million from the UK to Dubai following a major national investigation.
Jonathan Johnson, 54, and Jo-Emma Larvin, 43, a model and former girlfriend of boxer Joe Calzaghe, were found guilty yesterday following a trial at Isleworth Crown Court.
The pair, both of Grantley near Ripon, were charged with removal of cash from England and Wales which they knew or suspected was acquired through criminal conduct.
Both acted as couriers and were convicted alongside Beatrice Auty, 26, from London and Amy Harrison, 27, from Worcester Park in Surrey.
An investigation led by the National Crime Agency has so far seen eleven of the couriers in the network convicted.
£104 million smuggled to Dubai
The network smuggled more than £104 million from the UK to Dubai during 83 separate trips between November 2019 and October 2020, overseen by ringleader Abdullah Alfalsi, 47, who was jailed for more than nine years in July last year.
The couriers, who were paid around £3,000 for each trip and would be booked on business class flights due to the extra luggage allowance, communicated on a Whatsapp group entitled ’Sunshine and lollipops’.
Larvin made two trips to Dubai in August and September 2020.
One trip was with Amy Harrison when they took seven cases between them containing £2.2 million and another with her partner Jonathan Johnson, when they took eight suitcases containing £2.8 million.
Larvin and Johnson were arrested at Manchester Airport in March 2022.
The network collected cash from criminal groups around the UK, which was believed to be the profits of drug dealing, and took it to counting houses, usually rented apartments in central London.
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The money was then vacuum-packed and separated into suitcases which would typically each contain around £500,000, weighing around 40 kilos. They were sprayed with coffee or air fresheners in an effort to prevent them being found by Border Force detection dogs.
Ian Truby, senior investigating officer at the National Crime Agency, said:
“These couriers were important cogs in a large money laundering wheel.
“The crime group they belonged to was responsible for smuggling eye-watering amounts of criminal cash out of the UK.
“This simply wouldn’t have been possible without couriers doing their bidding, in return for a sunshine holiday and a slice of the profit.
“Cash is the lifeblood of organised crime groups, which they re-invest into activities such as drug trafficking. This fuels violence and insecurity around the world, which is why our investigation into other cash couriers continues.”
Larvin and Johnson will be sentenced later alongside five other couriers who have pleaded guilty at previous hearings.
Photo-a-day man from Harrogate writes autobiography aged just 30
A young Harrogate man who made international news when he turned 21 has written an autobiography to mark his 30th birthday.
Cory McLeod has led an extraordinary life since he was born, from trekking through South America as an infant with his parents to partying with boxer David Haye in his 20s.
It was a project begun by his dad on the day of his birth that first brought Cory to international attention.
Ian McLeod decided to take a photograph of his son’s face every day for the first year, or perhaps up to the age of two or three. At the time in 1991, he planned to turn into a flick-book – but the project soon grew.
Mr McLeod would send the camera with Cory’s teachers on school trips to ensure he didn’t miss a day, and even travelled for an hour late at night to take a shot when Cory was staying at a friend’s house, before driving home again.
Former Oatlands and St Aidan’s student Cory said:
“It was a family art project for a couple of years, but it became his passion or addiction and he just kept going.
“In his mind, 18 or 21 seemed a good time to stop, but when we got that far, we thought, ‘let’s keep going’.”
In 2012, Cory turned the photos into a video which he uploaded to YouTube, showing his development each day for more than two decades.
It proved a hit: it has since been viewed more than six million times. As a result, Cory and Ian hit the headlines and appeared on TV and radio shows around the world.
In the decade since, his life has been even more eventful.
Moving to Dubai to work in events has brought him into contact with numerous celebrities, from Rihanna to Prince Harry – who, on one memorable night, asked Cory to stop offering him drinks and leave him alone.
A keen traveller, Cory has had many adventures, not all of them trouble-free. He has been held at gunpoint and met bandits during his travels, but always managed to take his daily photograph to keep the project going.
Last month, he published a new video, including images up to his 30th birthday.
His new autobiography, which he began writing during the covid lockdown when he was stuck in his apartment in Dubai, is called 30 Years: A Life Lived Every Day. It covers all his experiences up to the age of 30, in late 2021.
It took him more than two years to complete it, often writing for six or seven hours after work.
The daily photographs, documenting wherever he was in the world, proved a useful prompt in his writing.
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The photos are a kind of social history, from masked selfies during the covid pandemic to the shot of him holding a Blockbuster video from the late 1990s. His favourites are those that show his travels around the world, and special moments in his family life.
Yet taking them has not always been easy, he said.
“I went through a phase where I was constantly remembering at 10 or 11 at night. I’m trying to get out of the habit of doing that.
“Over the course of the whole thing, we’ve only forgotten a handful of times.”
Cory’s autobiography will be published in August and is available to pre-order now.
It is his second book, after he turned his blog about his journey to Everest base camp into a book. He said he now has the writing bug and hopes to use his degree in TV and film production to turn to script writing next.
That drive to create comes from his parents, who were also adventurous: they took him backpacking in South America when he was just one. Dad Ian has since begun a new photo-a-day project, taking him from 60 to the end of his life.
As for the photographs – now selfies taken by Cory wherever he is in the world – he has no intention of stopping. He has his sights set on a lifetime of daily photos.
Vaccine prompts surge in bookings for Harrogate travel agent“I think it would be amazing – the first time you could see a full life, from birth to death.”
A Harrogate travel agent has reported a surge in bookings since news of coronavirus vaccines broke, and says there is “light at the end of the tunnel” for the stricken industry.
Holidays have been cancelled and dream itineraries to far-flung destinations dismantled due to the pandemic.
The continued uncertainty over travel corridors and which countries people can and can’t visit has prompted many to curb their wanderlust and stay in the UK.
Melanie O’Boyle, owner of TravelGate, on Albert Street in Harrogate said it had been been a “very challenging” year but there were finally signs of an improvement.
“It’s been a very dark tunnel for the industry but we’re starting to see some light ahead. It’s been a minefield constantly reassessing where people can go.”
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Melanie and her husband Phil have run their business in Harrogate for five years. The majority of the holidays they sell are long haul to countries such as Canada, the United States and Australia — and she said the vaccine has given travellers some confidence to start making plans for 2021.
“The vaccine news has given people that reassurance and the appetite is starting to come back. People are thinking ‘I can do this’.”
Melanie has a couple of recommendations for travellers looking to get away from the surgical masks, hand sanitisers and tiers that have dominated UK life in 2020:
“At the moment restrictions have been lifted in Dubai and Maldives. The hotels are geared up for tourists there. Villas are also popular as you have that private space and you’re not impacted by people around you or on top of you.”