MONEY launderers who took part in a £10 million tax scam have been ordered to do community service.

Tammy Ann Fernie, 37, and Gerald Dunphy, 31, were found guilty at Liverpool Crown Court on Monday February 14, of laundering the cash they made by tampering with low duty fuels to remove the chemical marker and then selling it on as legal road diesel.

The money was then put through a series of business bank accounts and cheque cashing companies to hide its origins.

HMRC's assistant director of criminal investigation Mike O’Grady said: “Fuel laundering is unregulated and dangerous but this gang was motivated solely by greed and personal gain, costing us all, as taxpayers, millions of pounds in stolen revenue.

“Cheap, laundered fuel is no bargain. It undercuts honest businesses and has devastating effects on the environment when the toxic by-products of the laundering process are dumped in the countryside.”

Fernie, 37, of Hillside Drive, Edgware, was handed a suspended one-year sentence and ordered to do 100 hours of community service.

Dunphy, 31, of Whitfield Avenue, Brent Cross, was also given a suspended one-year sentence and told to complete 150 hours of community service.