A Slough man is set to be jailed after smuggling almost £1.5 million in crooked cash from the UAE to the UK.

Muhammad Ilyas, was arrested at Heathrow Airport in February 2020 after losing a suitcase with more than £400,000 inside it.

The 29-year-old was a courier for the 'kingpin' of a money laundering gang that smuggled more than £100million from the UK to the UAE.

Abdullah Mohammed Ali Bin Beyat Alfalasi, 47, arranged for British cash mules to travel from the UK to Dubai with suitcases stuffed with a total of £104 million over nearly a year.

The cash - that was part of one of the biggest money laundering cases ever in Britain - was believed to be profits from drug dealing, and the couriers would pack hundreds of thousands of pounds at a time into suitcases.

At least 26 couriers were each paid between £3,000 and £8,000 per trip depending on how much cash they were smuggling.

In total, the group took at least 10 per cent cut from the money smuggled, so between them are likely to have made in excess of £12 million from the operation.

Hauls of cash was collected from criminal gangs around the UK and taken to counting houses, usually rented apartments in central London.

Wads of bank notes were then vacuum packed and separated into suitcases which would each contain around £500,000, weighing around 6.2st (40 kilos).

Each were sprayed with coffee or air fresheners in an bid to prevent them being found by Border Force detection dogs that sniff out cash.

Couriers flew business class due to the extra luggage allowance, according to the National Crime Agency (NCA).

Dubai national Alfalasi was arrested at his upmarket flat in Lowndes Square, Belgravia, when he visited London last December.

International money laundering networks use cash smuggling, cryptocurrencies, and banking systems to move billions of pounds of dirty money each year.

This cash can come from the drugs trade, fraud, other illegal commodities, and even linked to terrorism and conflicts around the world, experts said.

Ringleader Alfalasi himself made several cash trips between Dubai and the UK from November 2019 to March 2020.

His name appeared on letters bearing the name Omnivest Gold Trading LLC, which was used to cover cash declarations made by the couriers and his phone number was also used in their flight bookings.

Among Alfalasi's couriers were Nicola Esson, 55, from Leeds, Yorkshire, who was arrested during raids in last May, and 29-year-old Muhammad Ilyas, from Slough, Berkshire, who was apprehended in February 2020.

Esson travelled from Heathrow to Dubai three times in August and September 2020, checking in 19 suitcases with a combined weight of almost half a tonne.

She returned a few days after each trip with the same baggage items, which weighed significantly less each time.

Ilyas was arrested at Heathrow Airport after arriving on a flight from Dubai after checking in four suitcases at the airport ten days earlier - one of which had gone missing and declared almost £1.5 million in cash to Dubai Customs.

The missing suitcase was then found by Border Force with £431,360 in cash inside.

All three defendants pleaded guilty to money laundering charges at hearing in May and June this year.

At Isleworth Crown Court on Thursday, July 28, Alfalasi was sentenced to nine years and seven months in prison, while Esson and Ilyas will be sentenced at a later date.