A WOMAN from Llangollen has been cleared of money laundering.

Elaine Bird was discharged from the dock at Mold Crown Court after she was unanimously found not guilty of two charges.

Bird, 53, of Mount Pleasant – a former Denbighshire County Council cook and school escort – told that jury she was innocent and had been used.

She denied being part of a money laundering arrangement stemming from a scam under which victims paid out tens of thousands of pounds thinking they were investing in wine.

Bird denied money laundering between April 30, 2015 and May 30, 2016, and transferring the proceeds of fraud and said she was totally unaware of what was going on.

The prosecution said she was the registered director of a facilities management company called FMS Retail Ltd, which in 2016 received payments from two victims of a wine investment scam.

The account of FMS Retail Ltd received about £70,000 from the two victims.

In evidence Bird accepted she had set up bank accounts at the request of a Swindon man named David Darrell - the husband of one of her cousins.

She received £1,000 a month for receiving mail and forwarding it on to him, she explained.

Bird agreed the company was registered in her name but she said she believed it was legitimate and she had no suspicions.

She trusted her cousin’s husband who she regarded as a successful businessman.

Her barrister, Hunter Gray, said there was nothing to link his client with the two victims of the wine scam.

It was accepted that that there had been a plan by someone to defraud them but said his client was not involved in any way, he said.

David Darrell, 51, of Swindon, Wiltshire, is awaiting sentence after he previously changed his plea and admitted the transfer of criminal property.

His case was listed next week to give the prosecution time to decide whether or not his basis of plea was acceptable or whether evidence would have to be called in his case.