A Leitrim-based couple caught with more than three hundred and eighty thousand euro in cash in the back of their car have been jailed for money laundering.
Thirty-two-year-old Ihor Samotos and thirty-four-year-old Sabina Kolukhonova both pleaded guilty to laundering the money at Gulliver's Retail Park in Santry last October.
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard Samotos, a Ukrainian national living in County Leitrim, was recruited by an organised crime gang after going online looking for ways to earn more money because he wasn't getting enough work.
Garda surveillance officers watched him meet another man in a retail park car park, where he completed a two-step verification process by sending photos of his clothes and a five euro note before collecting a box of cash.
Detectives moved in moments later and arrested those involved, recovering more than three hundred and eighty-three thousand euro. The court heard Kolukhonova was aware of what was happening and assisted Samotos during the handover.
Judge Martin Nolan sentenced Samotos to five and a half years in prison, after reducing a headline sentence of nine and a half years because of his early guilty plea, co-operation and lack of previous convictions.
Kolukhonova was jailed for twenty months. A third man arrested as part of the operation remains before the courts.
