On 1 March 2017, a 23-year-old Englishman stood before a judge in Phoenix, Arizona, wearing an orange jumpsuit and flanked by armed guards. George Cottrell had offered, at just 20 years old, to launder millions of dollars from drug trafficking. But the traffickers were law-enforcement agents, and Cottrell was indicted on 21 counts of conspiracy to commit money laundering, mail fraud, wire fraud, blackmail and interstate communication with intent to extort. After submitting a plea agreement in which he admitted – “I falsely claimed that I would launder the criminal proceeds… I intended to retain the money” – he escaped all but one charge: wire fraud.
In sentencing, the judge described Cottrell’s plan as sophisticated and “very dangerous”, but also noted his youth. “This does not need to define you”, she told him. “And so it’s up to you to go forward from here.” By the summer, Cottrell was back in London, where he was photographed outside a pub with his very close friend Nigel Farage. The revelation, published in the New Statesman, does Farage no favours, thrusting his association with a convicted fraudster back into the spotlight.
“Nigel Farage’s close friend George Cottrell was sentenced for a sophisticated money laundering plot.”