A BOOKMAKER has been jailed for 21 months for money laundering and ordered to pay £57,000 or face an extra two years behind bars.

Gerald Desmond Geraghty, 61, of Primrose Hill Farm, Terrington, pleaded guilty to offences committed between September 2001 and April 2004. An investigation by the National Crime Squad (NCS) found he had been making false payouts into his accomplices' foreign bank accounts in return for large sums of cash.

Robert Dimmock, 49, and Paul Turner, 44, both of Doncaster, also pleaded guilty to money laundering charges at Leeds Crown Court.

The three men met through the racing circuit and Geraghty and Dimmock had jointly owned a number of racehorses.

An NCS spokesman said: "This case involved the issue of cheques totalling around £100,000. Geraghty admitted assisting Dimmock to clean up his money so that he could profit from criminality."

The court heard how a police investigation discovered that Geraghty, who ran a betting shop in Doncaster, had been given large sums of cash by Dimmock, an international cigarette smuggler.

Geraghty then wrote him cheques for the same amounts, which were paid into bank accounts held by Turner and Dimmock in Luxembourg.

Geraghty wrote fake names on the cheque stubs to hide his involvement and claimed they represented legitimate winnings by Dimmock but his business records showed the cheques were false.

After the cash was banked in Luxembourg it was then transferred to a limited company, set up by Turner, on the Isle Of Man.

The company then bought property in Doncaster and Newcastle, which Turner bought back in his own name by making fraudulent applications for mortgages.

He transferred the equity in the Isle Of Man to more accounts in Jersey and then Prague.

The money was then transferred to an account in Cyprus, held by Dimmock, who passed it into the accounts of family and friends so they could draw it out and return it to him in cash.

Judge Geoffrey Marson sentenced Dimmock to four years in prison, Turner to three years and nine months and Geraghty to 21 months.

He also imposed a confiscation order of £57,000 to be repaid within three months by Geraghty or he would face an extra two years in jail.

Gerald Geraghty, whose brother, Michael, ran Geraghty Racing in the 1980s, bought four Tattersalls pitches around the north in 1999, to operate with his son, Andy.