Woman jailed after making $30m in illegal cash transfers over six months
Inside a nondescript suburban house in western Sydney, a petite woman — who stands at just 150cm tall — was caught running an illegal cash transferring operation that moved $30 million in just six months. A court has revealed how she did it as she faced her sentencing hearing.
Police & Courts
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Standing at less than 150cm, you wouldn’t pick Thi Thuy Hoa Bui as being the queen of an illegal international money transferring operation based in western Sydney.
But that’s exactly how the 47-year-old mother of two made a living, according to documents tendered in the Sydney District Court where she was jailed last month.
She directed a criminal group — which included her sister — that illegally transferred more than $30 million in cash in just six months in 2017.
The service was provided to a long list of clients, including a man linked to a large scale drug syndicate that prepared kilogram blocks of cocaine for sale in an apartment overlooking the Sydney CBD in the World Tower building.
Hoa Bui transferred the money for her clients via Vietnam in a process that saw her direct them to drop bags of cash to a number of nondescript suburban houses at Chipping Norton and Moorebank where her family members resided.
Hoa Bui was based in Vietnam but directed one of her six Sydney based sisters, Thi Thanh Bui, and others on how to collect and deposit the cash in ATMs.
According to the documents, customers were given a code, in the form of a serial number on a Vietnamese cash note, that the deliverer of the cash was to bring to the drop off.
The cash would then be broken down into amounts under $10,000 — so as not to arouse the suspicion of law enforcement when it was deposited in ATMs.
Once the money landed in a bank account believed to be beyond the reach of police, the owner of the cash would be sent the message: “You have a present from Vietnam.”
The operation fell apart when detectives from the NSW Police Organised Crime Squad arrested Hoa Bui in April 2018 at a home on Yachtsman Dr, Chipping Norton during one of her rare visits to Sydney.
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It was a rare slip up by the woman who one year earlier cancelled a trip to Australia after police raided one of the properties used for the money drop-offs.
In court, she pleaded guilty to knowingly dealing with the proceeds of crime and directing a criminal group.
In the Sydney District Court on May 28, Judge Peter Zara jailed the mother of two for a maximum of five years and three months with a non-parole period of three years and six months.
Her Sydney based sister, Thi Thanh Huong Bui, pleaded guilty to the same charges and was sentenced to a maximum three years and nine months in jail with a minimum term of two years and six months.
Their lawyer Stephen Alexander said the sentences reflected that prosecutors did not have the evidence to link all of the money transfers to being an operation that laundered money for organised crime groups.
“This left open the possibility that the money was transferred to avoid tax or for some other lawful reason,” Mr Alexander said.
According to court documents, the syndicate transferred more than $30 million between May and October 2017.
One of her best customers was a Sydney based runner for a drug syndicate that dropped more than $6.2m to her operation over the period, the documents said.
Police recovered CCTV that showed the man recovering a package sent to the exclusive private school, Pymble Ladies College, on Sydney’s North Shore in May 2017.
Australian Border Force records showed the US based company listed as the sender on the package, Powertrain, had sent five other packages that were seized and found to contain cocaine.
Police then monitored a seventh package of cocaine sent by the company to Pymble Golf Club and arrested a second man who appeared to collect it, the documents said.
Another customer, who dropped $250,000 to be transferred was connected to a cocaine operation run from an apartment in the World Tower building in the Sydney CBD.
Court documents said police raided the apartment and found more than $886,000, packaging for one kilo blocks of cocaine, sets of breathing apparatus and money counting machines.
They also found stencils featuring “XXX” and “8S” believed to be used to print a logo on the top of blocks of cocaine, the documents said.
Police listened to tapped phone calls where unidentified people arranged for Hoa Bui’s syndicate to transfer millions.
Investigators were able to collect the evidence to prove the phone calls related to money transfers during a raid of a Yagoona home of one of the family members in September 2017.
During the raid, police found a purple notebook that contained a spreadsheet ledger with dollar figures from the cash drops on dates that matched the tapped phone calls.