Company boss accused of money-laundering

ACOMPANY director received almost £200,000 in a bank account he controlled after another company was scammed into sending the funds, a court has heard.

Nikki Flowers, 40, of Cardiff, is accused of money-laundering by allowing an account he operated under the name of his company Massive Dynamics Incorporated Ltd to receive £192,892, which had been obtained fraudulently.

The money came from a company called Nationwide Platforms Ltd (NPL) where an employee was the victim of a “phishing email” purporting to be from BT which enabled fraudsters to request invoices to be paid to the account belonging to Flowers.

On May 24, 2018, the funds were transferred into the Massive Dynamics account, of which Flowers had control.

A trial at Cardiff Crown Court yesterday heard the defendant was seen on CCTV withdrawing cash from an ATM shortly after the money was transferred.

Flowers, of Fishguard Road, Llanishen, Cardiff, denies entering into an arrangement for facilitating the acquisition, retention or control of criminal property. He has not been charged with any fraud offences and there is no suggestion he was behind the fraud of NPL.

Opening the trial, prosecutor Genevieve Reed said: “The case really centres around a bank account under the name Massive Dynamic Incorporated Ltd which was opened in 2017.

“The Crown’s case is this was an account set up by Nikki Flowers, that he exercised control of the account, and the prominent purpose of that bank account was to receive money obtained from crime. In other words money-laundering.

“Mr Flowers was responsible for that bank account. He opened it, ran it day to day, made withdrawals, and attempted to make bank transfers. The Massive Dynamics was essentially Mr Flowers’ account.”

The defendant is accused of entering into the arrangement with unknown parties between October 12, 2017, and July 10, 2018.

The fraud itself took place between May 16 and 24, 2018, which began with an employee receiving a phishing email.

Ms Reed said: “A link in that email was clicked on and details were entered by an employee believing it to be a legitimate email. A third party was able to access the email account of the employee at NPL whose role was to process invoices and arrange payments.

“Once that phishing email had done its job they were able to divert genuine BT emails from her inbox into another folder, hoping she would not see them. They then sent NPL emails purporting to be emails from BT. They appeared to be genuine and appeared to be from BT but they were in fact not.

“These false emails told NPL invoices needed to be paid into a new bank account and provided details for that. These details were not for BT but the Massive Dynamics account.

“As a result of that deception, on

May 24, 2018, the employee made a bank transfer of nearly £200,000 believing it was going to a BT account but was in fact sent to the Massive Dynamics account.”

The court also heard Flowers attempted to transfer £900 from the Massive Dynamics account into another account after the NPL money had been transferred, but this failed.

After his arrest his phone was seized and found to contain messages from his bank, which included details for mobile banking and a text from a third party which included banking details.

Ms Reed added: “There are communications between Mr Flowers and another person at key times during this case and the same person provided bank details.

“We do not know who committed the fraud. We cannot say what role was performed by others in respect of the fraud and the laundering of those funds. What we do say is that Mr Flowers was clearly involved in an arrangement to launder funds from that fraud.”

The trial continues.