Cemal Yildirin jailed after £220k found in Felixstowe lorry

Cemal Yildirin arrived in the UK at Felixstowe on March 27 this year from Turkey with a consignment of fish and was the subject of a random search by Border Force officers as he made the return journey three days later.

When the officers searched the mattress on the top bunk in his cab, they found 49 bundles of cash totalling £229,000, Ipswich Crown Court heard.

Yildirin, 53, of no fixed address, admitted possessing criminal property.

Cemal Yildirin was jailed at Ipswich Crown Court for two years for trying to bring more than £200,000 in his lorry. (Image: Suffolk Constabulary)

Jailing him for two years, Judge Emma Peters said: “You knew perfectly well that in the cab of your lorry you were carrying nearly £250,000 of criminal property which was to be taken out of the country to be laundered for the benefit of the criminal gang you must have been working for.”

She accepted Yildirin had been in a desperate financial situation but said that people who committed this sort of crime must expect to be punished and people in his situation had to be deterred from making this sort of journey.

Judge Peters said that what Yildirin did was unlikely to have been done on the spur of the moment and would have involved some planning.

“You had an important function because without you the money couldn’t be transported to the continent,” said the judge.

She said that Yildirin would automatically be deported after he had served half his sentence.

Dr Samrat Sengupta for Yildirin described the offence as opportunistic and a “one off”.

He said his client, who had been a lorry driver for 20 years, had been in debt which had led him giving into temptation.

“He had been to England many times before and nothing like this had ever taken place in the past,” said Dr Sengupta.