The other Post Office scandal: how organised crime launders money on the high street
Hundreds of millions of pounds of criminal cash are being deposited at post offices every year, according to a Guardian investigation by Oliver Bullough – and police forces have been reluctant to investigate the scale of the problem.
A reverse cash machine
Post offices began accepting bank deposits in 2017, and deposits now exceed £30 billion a year. The process works like a cash machine in reverse: a customer presents cash and a PIN, and the system credits the account. No identity check is made and counter staff cannot see account details or transaction patterns, making it impossible for them to spot the behaviour that would trigger scrutiny at a bank branch.
Monthly deposits rose from £1.9 billion in October 2020 to £2.9 billion in October 2025 – a 50% increase over five years, during a period in which two-thirds of bank branches closed and cash fell to fewer than one in ten UK transactions.
The Leicester case
The investigation centres on Jigar Gheewala, an unemployed bankrupt living in a £1.3 million house in Leicester, who received £880,000 across some 200 deposits in 2020. Leicestershire Police’s Operation Kilo, which ran from 2021 to 2025, established that he had laundered £53 million through the post office network. He was sentenced in December 2025 to nearly 12 years.
The method was simple and repeatable. Mules collected bundles of criminal cash from couriers and made multiple deposits across Leicester branches each day, using ten or more accounts per stop and bank cards with the PINs written on the back. The accounts belonged to vulnerable individuals or to businesses covered by falsified invoices, and the money was dispersed through cryptocurrency exchanges once deposited. Mules were paid £50 for every £10,000 laundered.
Not an isolated case
Similar prosecutions have followed across the country: Giuseppe Sangiovanni laundered £2.2 million through Bristol and Gloucestershire branches and changed his plea to guilty in May 2025; two men were jailed in Birmingham in January 2026 for a scheme depositing up to £200,000 a day across ten post offices; a Cheltenham man was jailed for six years and eight months in April 2026; and two men were jailed in 2024 for paying £26 million into post offices before their arrests in 2017.
Internal figures cited in the investigation include £7 million of questionable deposits across 45 branches in July 2020, and £5–7 million a week at two east London branches in November 2020. The National Crime Agency estimates £12 billion of banknote laundering takes place in the UK each year.
Why so little enforcement
The Guardian points to a set of overlapping incentives. Post Office Ltd earned £309 million from banking and ATMs in 2024-25 while paying out more than £1 billion in Horizon compensation, and sub-postmasters are remunerated by transaction fees on deposits. Cash deposit limits imposed by the Financial Conduct Authority in 2023 met political opposition from retailers and MPs. And the Horizon scandal itself has undermined police confidence in prosecuting cases built on Post Office evidence – one Blackburn detective is reported to have halted a money laundering investigation citing the reputational damage. In most cases the money has moved on before police can intervene.
Article Credit: https://www.theguardian.com/news/ng-interactive/2026/aug/25/other-post-office-scandal-organised-crime-launders-money-high-street