Crook ordered to repay £126,000 by selling home

A woman who helped launder money from the sale of stolen cars has been ordered to sell her home to pay back £126,000 – or face more time in prison.

Mother-of-three Hayley Hughes, 40, was jailed last year after admitting 14 counts of money laundering. She was released on appeal after three months.

At a Proceeds of Crime hearing at Birmingham Crown Court this week she was given six months to pay back the £126,000 in "criminally held assets", and told to sell her house to fund the payment.

If she does not meet the deadline, she will face a prison sentence of two years and three months.

Det Sgt Dave Treacy, from West Midlands Police's payback team, welcomed the ruling.

"This is an excellent example of our confiscation powers, removing the assets from criminals who seek to profit from their criminality," he said.

"Any criminals who believe they can serve time and then be released from prison to a cosy nest-egg of ill-gotten gains can think again."

He said under the Proceeds of Crime Act that money would be taken away and handed to good causes.

Hughes, of Marshwood Croft, Halesowen, was jailed for two years in June last year, but after three months behind bars a panel of three appeal judges released her, agreeing that the original jail term was too harsh.

They replaced it with a 12-month sentence, suspended for 18 months, with a supervision order.

The court had been told that Hughes was addicted to crack cocaine before getting into a relationship with criminal Lee Morris.

Morris, 36, is serving a 10-year jail term after pleading guilty to a string of 36 burglaries, many of which involved stealing cars, pocketing an estimated £600,000.

He was jailed in 2009 and ordered to pay back almost all his estimated profits at a Proceeds of Crime Act hearing in April last year.