Notorious crime clan chief jailed for 7 years for money laundering
A TOP member of one of Britain’s most notorious crime families has finally been jailed after police smashed his money laundering network.
Thomas ‘Tommy’ Adams, 59, used trusted couriers to smuggle hundreds of thousands of pounds in dirty cash up and down Britain.
He was the second-in-command of the feared Clerkenwell crime syndicate, linked to dozens of murders, racketeering and bullion smuggling. But the underworld crime boss and his closest henchmen were brought down as part of a multi-million pound Scotland Yard operation.
His elder brother Terry, 62, once the gang’s feared leader, is already hamstrung by financial orders after being jailed for a similar offence. And another brother Patrick, known as Patsy, 61, is serving a nine year jail term after shooting an associate he suspected of being a grass.
Last night detectives said Tommy Adams appeared to have had a ‘ghost-like’ existence, amid suspicions he successfully concealed the full scale of his empire.
Investigators found Adams lived like a king with lavish holidays, cars and clothes despite having ‘no financial footprint’. They uncovered a complex web in which he disguised the ownership of all his properties and assets in an apparent bid to evade the authorities.
Adams was convicted of two counts of conspiracy to transfer criminal property and one count of conspiracy to conceal criminal property. He was jailed for seven years in August after a two month trial at maximum security Woolwich Crown Court.
The victory for police can only be reported after a second case was dropped after he collapsed from a suspected heart attack outside a pub opposite the court.
And the prosecution of his daughter Terri, 35, for money laundering was ordered to lie on file after his son Shaun, 32, admitted transferring criminal property earlier this week.
The trial jury heard how undercover police discovered Adams used a taxi firm to collect debts from gangsters in Manchester. They bugged a café in Holborn, central London, and caught him discussing details of his activities over two years until 2014.
His couriers were then picked off one by one as police caught them carrying wads of cash in carrier bags and wrapped in tinfoil. Almost £250,000 was recovered.
The intimidating gang laughed and joked during the trial, sometimes play- sparring with each other in the dock. Seven other accomplices, including his most trusted lieutenants, were also jailed for up to five years and three months. The second trial would have related to the purchase, redevelopment, rental and part-sale of a former public house in Bow.
Prosecutors claimed the whole enterprise was funded by fraudulent mortgage transactions undertaken on Adams’s instructions.
Shaun Adams, who admitted fabricating a wage slip to enable his sister to obtain the loan, was sentenced to a suspended sixmonth jail sentence.
The court heard Terri, who lives in Spain, was once bought a £32,000 car by her father.
Police and the security services have scored a series of significant blows against the Adams crime family in recent years. The fearsome criminal network dominated Britain for more than 30 years, with lesser criminals ‘franchising’ its name for kudos. Police suspect members of drug trafficking, extortion and hijacking but in recent years they have moved into high-tech crime, including mortgage fraud.
There is evidence members of the Adams family have escaped prosecution by infiltrating the police and Crown Prosecution Service. The family crime business, known to many as the ‘A Team’, was also suspected of links to the Russian mafia and the powerful Columbian cocaine cartels.
Tommy Adams has convictions dating back to the 1970s. In 1998 he was jailed for seven and a half years for masterminding a drugs smuggling operation. In March, Terry Adams failed in his bid to avoid paying back £700,000 of criminal cash. He was jailed for seven years in 2007.
Det Chief Supt Mick Gallagher said: ‘Any criminal gang operating in London needs to know we will tackle them head on.’
‘Laughed and joked in the dock’