Preston-based illegal immigrant to be deported after serving prison sentence for possessing £40k of criminal money

Egliven Atija was found with the cash when police tailed a car down the M6 in Lancashire and stopped it near Preston.

The 40-year-old Albanian was jailed for 20 months by a judge at the city's Crown Court after he admitted the money, stuffed in his jacket and bag, was the proceeds of criminal activity. He told the court that he had borrowed it from a friend to pay off a debt to people smugglers who had brought him into the country.

Zareen Alan-Cheetham, prosecuting, told the court that police, acting on intelligence, were told to intercept a grey Audi A4 car travelling down the M6 in Lancashire which was believed to be linked to money laundering and drug supply.

They eventually pulled it over just off the motorway in Stubbins Lane, near Garstang. Atija was a front seat passenger in the vehicle and when it was search officers found eight bundles of bank notes, all containing £5,000 each, in the sleeves of a coat belonging to him. They also found two phones, one an old style Nokia.

Miss Tara Riley, for Atija, told the court a deportation order had been signed meaning he would be returned to Albania once his sentence had been served. "He came into this country on the back of an HGV," she revealed. The trip had cost him £25,000 and he had told police he had travelled to Scotland to borrow money, some of which was to pay off his debt to the people smugglers.

Miss Recorder Michelle Brown told him: "You said (to police) you knew the money was from an illegal source." She added: "This offence is so serious, given your previous convictions."

She told him she was sentencing him to 20 months in jail. "Ordinarily you would serve half of that, however you are an illegal immigrant to this country.

"I understand you have signed a deportation order. I can inform you that you may on the completion of half of your sentence you may be held further and subject to deportation, or any decision the Home Office or immigration service decide."