Jail for gang in bungled bid to launder £20 notes

Gang members who laundered £20 notes from a bungled cash-in-transit robbery by using coin machines at motorway service stations have been jailed.

They turned to the change machines after a "unsophisticated and disastrous" bid to remove the tell-tale dye from the notes, all but trashing a hotel room where they had tried to bleach and dry the stash.

But, after that failed and made the tainted cash impossible to pass off in shops or banks, they toured Staffordshire and West Midland motorway service stations.

They tried to change the notes for hundreds of pounds worth of £1 coins in change and gaming machines.

Wolverhampton Crown Court heard yesterday how they were arrested near the M5 services at Frankley near Halesowen after staff saw them on security cameras and tipped off police.

The saga started when a group of men left a room at Travelodge in Wolverhampton Road, Oldbury, in a mess on May 16 last year.

Prosecutor Iain Willis explained: "Bank notes had been stuck to the bathroom mirror to dry after attempts to take the dye off them. Three bottles of bleach were also left behind along with hand wash and other items."

Four days later, a manager at the Hilton Park service station on the M6 near Cannock found 10 £20 notes stained with purple dye in a gaming machine and the CCTV was checked to identify the culprits.

The gang returned to the service station on May 27 and were seen climbing into a Seat car belonging to 30-year-old Dhaminder Sunner after £140 had been changed into £1 coins.

They were arrested after a return visit to Frankley service station.

Sunner from Lea Road, Penn Fields, was jailed for one year and 10 weeks while Philip Ebanks, 26 of Eastfield Road, Tipton, got 12 months. Another member of the gang,

Mohammed Zeyarrab, 25, from Westbourne Road, West Bromwich, who had also breached a suspended sentence, received 67 weeks behind bars.

All pleaded guilty to converting criminal property.