Six men have been found guilty of laundering more than £6 million of criminal money through bank accounts and cryptocurrency, following a lengthy trial at the High Court in Glasgow.

Asim Afzal, 34, Aftab Allah, 36, Shehbaz Allah, 40, Hamzah Habib, 38, Kamran Javid, 33, and Imad Younis, 37, were convicted on Friday, 6 November 2026, of charges under the Proceeds of Crime Act. Police Scotland said the group laundered criminal property between 2015 and 2019.

Cash, bank transfers and crypto wallets

Prosecutors told the court the six men worked together and with others in a scheme involving money they suspected or knew was criminal property. The group arranged large cash deposits, moved money through personal and business bank accounts, and converted criminal proceeds into cryptocurrency assets to evade detection.

The charge against them said they received, deposited, transferred, exchanged and organised the transmission of cryptocurrency and cash by putting it into bank accounts and digital cash wallets on behalf of others. The indictment originally featured a figure of more than £6 million, which was later amended to a sum of money, but Police Scotland confirmed the sum involved was over £6 million.

Money hidden in a shop ceiling

The court heard the group was effectively laundering cash for Gary Morris, a convicted drug trafficker jailed for trafficking millions of pounds of cocaine. Jurors were shown footage of officers searching the Day to Day shop in Rutherglen, Lanarkshire, where Aftab Allah and other relatives worked. Tens of thousands of pounds were found hidden in a Nike bag in the ceiling space, and the court was also told of a photograph of £300,000 in cash taken by one of the gang.

Shehbaz Allah told jurors that Morris was a family friend who he believed worked in the building trade and had an interest in cars, and insisted he did not know the man was involved in high-level criminality. He said some of the cash belonged to him from legal cryptocurrency trading and that the majority belonged to Morris, who had asked him to keep it because his bank account had been frozen.

Prosecutor Erin Campbell put it to Allah that he had been instrumental in helping to open different accounts to shift and hide the dirty cash, and that he had a network of people he could deal in cryptocurrency with. She suggested this could be an advantage to a drug dealer with a lot of money who wanted to keep as much distance as possible from where it came from. Allah denied this.

Remanded ahead of sentencing

All six men had been on bail, but judge Lady Poole remanded them in custody after the verdicts. They could each receive a maximum 14-year jail term when they are sentenced next month in Edinburgh.

Lady Poole told them: “Money laundering is a serious offence. It enables those responsible for crime to conceal and transfer criminal proceeds. This, in turn, allows criminal enterprises to remain operational, reinvest profits and expand their activities.”

The gang also face a separate confiscation hearing, likely next year, under the Proceeds of Crime Act, and prosecutors have moved for the first three defendants to be made subject to Serious Crime Prevention Orders.

Detective Sergeant Lesley Buchanan-Barlas of Police Scotland said targeting those involved in handling illicitly sourced funds remains a priority for the force, and that cases like this show its commitment to detecting and disrupting such activity.