Stirling student who laundered £85,000 for crime lord jailed
- Published
Xiaotong Huang laundered money for nearly two years
A student who laundered nearly £85,000 for a Chinese crime lord based in Glasgow has been jailed for 18 months.
Xiaotong Huang, 28, used the money from a man named as Wai Ma - who went by "Mr Big" - to pay her student fees and buy luxury items for about two years.
Ma travelled around Scotland in a Mercedes giving bags of money to associates to clean.
Huang denied the charge but was found guilty of money laundering linked with serious organised crime in March.
Sums totalling £160,000 were washed through four of her bank accounts
However she was convicted of laundering £84,912 in total.
The court heard an analysis of Huang's accounts showed that between June 2019 and April 2021 she had banked more than £160,400 with Santander, Monzo and Starling banks.
Around £56,000 was deposited in cash.
At the time she was studying for a masters' in publishing at the University of Stirling.
More than £32,000 had been transferred abroad and £31,000 had been used to pay the university for tuition fees and accommodation.
Over £37,000 had been used to purchase high value goods from designers and retailers including Gucci, Harrods, and Louis Vuitton.
Tens of thousands of pounds, as well as £7,000 worth of expensive wine bought in a single day, were sent to China.
Huang claimed she had got the money from her Chinese fiancé, then living in Germany, whom she said was now dead.
She also said she had got money from fellow Chinese students at the University of Stirling, whom she said had since returned to China, and from her parents - who did not travel from China to the UK to give evidence in support of her claims.
Huang was studying for a masters in publishing at the University of Stirling
The court was told that Ma had absconded.
He was described as the "main nominal" in a police investigation into a "significant" money laundering racket codenamed Operation Skipper.
Police watched as Huang got into his Mercedes in a car park near her halls of residence in April 2021.
She emerged with a brown paper bag which she took to the travel money section of the nearest Post Office.
She later claimed the bag contained only Chinese dumplings, but she was seen taking a wad of banknotes "an inch and a half thick" out of it and depositing £3,500 in one of her accounts.
Police swooped on Ma's car in Dundee a fortnight later.
He was in the driver's seat and had three passengers in the car, as well as nearly £50,000 in cash in the boot and rear footwell.
Huang was arrested in her halls of residence in May 2021.
None of the luxury goods were ever recovered.
Solicitor-advocate Calum Weir, defending, said Huang had been "naïve and to some extent exploited".
He asked for her to be given a non-custodial sentence so she could return to her parents in Beijing, who were described as people "of more than adequate means".
But Sheriff Keith O'Mahony said he was not persuaded there was any appropriate disposal other than custody, noting: "I do accept she's not at the top of the tree."