Gang jailed over £12 million fake cash plot ordered to pay back £200,000
It was believed to be the largest seizure of fake money in the UK.
A gang behind the largest seizure of fake money in the UK which saw £12 million of counterfeit notes flooding Britain, have been ordered to pay back more than £200,000.
Phillip Brown, 56, John Evans, 40, and Nick Winter, 61, were jailed for over 21 years between them over the conspiracy to run a printing press out of an office in Beckenham, south east London.
It is believed the defendants made millions by selling the knock-off money to other criminals, with the Bank of England removing notes with a total face value of over £1.9 million from UK circulation.
It is thought police made the largest face-value seizure of fake currency in UK history in a raid in 2019.
Brown was arrested at one of the printing press offices and told the officers "you have caught me red-handed".
A judge at Woolwich Crown Court on 9 June ordered the men to repay more than £210,000.
Brown was told to pay back £201,761 and Winter must pay £4,000, while Evans had previously been ordered to pay £7,258 at an earlier hearing in November 2021.
An investigation into the crew began when the Bank of England discovered a new counterfeit £20 note had entered general circulation.
The note appeared to have been produced using the type of specialist equipment that would normally be linked with a company printing large volumes of magazines or leaflets.
Investigators found parts and materials linked with making fake cash on a commercial scale had been ordered and were linked to a printing press owned by Winter in Beckenham.
A dog walker found around £5m worth of false banknotes dumped in a street in Belvedere, south east London, in October 2019.
Three months later, another £200,940 was found scattered along the railway line between Farningham and Longfield in Kent.
A raid of their business HQ in May 2019 saw police catch Brown and another man surrounded by printing equipment and large piles of fake £20 notes, later confirmed as having a total face value of £5.25million.
Over the following months, more large amounts of counterfeit cash believed to have been printed by the gang continued to be discovered in circulation.
Evans, of Esher, Surrey, was sentenced to 10 years in prison, while Brown, from Longfield, Kent, was jailed for six-and-a-half years in January 2021.
Winter, of Beckenham, was sentenced to six years in December 2020.
Detective Inspector David Godfrey, of Kent Police, said: "The offenders in this case printed their own money but their criminal actions have ended up costing them their freedom and now the money they had no right to in the first place."
