Five men – including three from Leicestershire – who attempted to launder more than £2 million stolen from a university through a network of bank accounts, are beginning prison sentences.
The sentences are the culmination of an investigation by Sussex Police’s Money Laundering Investigation Team and the East Midlands Regional Asset Recovery Team (RART).
The money had been obtained when officials at the University of Sussex, who thought they were dealing with a legitimate Manchester construction firm which the university had chosen to carry out a redevelopment of student accommodation, had been deceived by a forged invoice.
That forged invoice instructed the university to pay money into bank accounts controlled by 37-year-old Gurdip Singh, formerly of Spencefield Lane, in Leicester.
Also involved in the crime were Singh’s business partner Hamel Bakrania, 36, of Campbell Avenue, Leicester, 50-year-old Dennis Francis, of King Edward Road, Loughborough, Innocent Ohazurume, also aged 50, and from Martham Close, in London, and 43-year-old Andrew Wormstone, of Ashworth Road, Pontefract, in West Yorkshire.
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