Dog who sniffed out £10m of illicit notes
WITH her gentle eyes, floppy ears and friendly demeanour, she hardly looks the sort to spend her days fighting crime.
But springer spaniel Ruby is in fact Britain’s most successful money detection dog – and during her career has sniffed out £10.5million of smuggled currency.
The six-year-old works at Heathrow Airport, where she has made hundreds of finds. Her largest single haul was £200,000 in cash and banker’s drafts in handluggage heading for Thailand.
Even royalty is not immune to her smelling powers, and she was caught instinctively sniffing the Queen’s handbag during a visit to the Home Office in November. Ruby’s record-breaking success during her five-year career is a huge boost to Britain’s crackdown on money smuggling in the fight against terror.
Extremists are increasingly trying to sneak bundles of cash out of the UK to Islamic State - some of which will be used to fund attempts to bring terror to Britain’s streets. Criminals and tax dodgers also try to smuggle out vast sums of money in a bid to escape the authorities.
Ruby specialises in detecting the scent of ink on banknotes, which is much harder than sniffing for drugs or explosives because the smell of money varies more. During a ten-hour shift she will check around four flights, which carry thousands of pieces of luggage and up to 580 people.
When she finds a scent, Ruby will ‘freeze’ at its strongest point, pointing at it with her nose. Her nose is so keen she can even identify notes that have been folded inside food or toiletries, as well as picking up the scent of cash on smugglers’ hands and clothes.
Her handler, Border Force officer Dave Bellingham, 38, said: ‘She is brilliant, a very, very special dog. She’s really enthusiastic for her work. To her, it is a game, like hide-and-seek...But for anyone trying to smuggle currency past her it can’t be very enjoyable because she’s so good at finding it.’