13.09.23 – Tyres dumped illegally in trailer as part of organised crime spree will cost council £10k to remove. The 40-feet-long dual axle trailer was illegally dumped in Narrowboat Way, Dudley, with hundreds of old tyres inside. It has been severely damaged including having the roof cut off and corrosion has been found throughout. This is the second trailer to be dumped in the borough in as many weeks which included one full of building rubble in Swindon Road, Kingswinford. The council is also aware of other trailers dumped in the region at around the same time and issues nationally. Council bosses believe the incidents are part of an organised crime gang in a bid to save money on proper, legal disposal of waste. However, the trailers can cost up to £30,000 each to remove by the council for serious cases of hazardous waste.
15.09.23 – More than 70 years in jail for money laundering and people smuggling network dismantled by the NCA. Sixteen people who were part of a West London-based organised crime group involved in international money laundering and people smuggling have been given jail sentences totalling more than 70 years. A National Crime Agency investigation identified that members of the network were likely to have smuggled around £70 million in cash out of the UK, making hundreds of trips to Dubai, UAE, between 2017 and 2019.
15.09.23 – Time out for match-fixers manipulating livestreams. In 2020, law enforcement officers detected a number of suspicious online bets on international table tennis tournaments. Subsequent analysis led to the identification of a criminal network composed of Bulgarian and Romanian nationals, established in Spain, who were corrupting athletes mainly from these two same nationalities. The suspects targeted competitions mainly outside of Spain, while the leader of the organisation corrupted athletes playing for several football teams in Romania. They also provided this information to other fixers, and simultaneously managed to gather knowledge about frauds perpetrated by criminal organisations active in the same area.
16.09.23 – Man jailed over north east port cocaine seizure. A member of an organised crime group has been jailed for his involvement in an attempt to import cocaine worth £9.2 million into the north east of England. Polish national Lucasz Sienkiewicz, 37, was arrested after National Crime Agency investigators were able to link him to a seizure at The Port of Tyne, North Shields, in October 2018. Border Force officers had stopped a lorry delivering machine parts from the Netherlands and discovered blocks of cocaine in the spare tyres from an x-ray of the vehicle.
