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Man jailed five years for laundering $2.2m

Roger Cox, 38, was today jailed for money laundering

A man guilty of the largest money-laundering enterprise ever prosecuted in Bermuda was jailed for five years this morning.Roger Cox, 38, used a network of 33 people to help him launder $2.2 million, which he obtained from running illegal gambling dens.The crime spanned a five-year period from 2004 onwards.When police searched his St George's home and a bank deposit box, they found a total of $708,560 cash he'd stashed away.Jailing him, Chief Justice Richard Ground said: “The scale of this operation and length of time over which it was conducted takes this case out of the ordinary.”He also jailed Michelle Lindsay, a 49-year-old former bookkeeper, for assisting Cox launder $24,950 of his dirty money.She processed the cash through her own bank accounts, while suspecting it might be the proceeds of crime.Meting out a four-month jail sentence, he told Lindsay, a former employee of Gibbons Financial Services: “There is a strong public interest in upholding the integrity of the financial sector and deterring those who would subvert it.“In a very real sense, you and people like you represent the problem. As long as ordinary people are willing to carry out banking transactions for others in suspicious circumstances, without asking any questions, it will be easy for criminals to launder the proceeds of their crimes.”When Cox pleaded guilty in March, he signed an order allowing the courts to confiscate $1.47 million in assets including the cash found in his home and bank box, jewellery and the contents of his bank accounts.None of the other people said to have assisted Cox in his money-laundering scheme have been brought before the courts.