A YOUNG mother who helped launder her crooked father’s dirty money walked free from court after seeing him jailed for 18 months for a string of crimes.

Paul Brown was an unlicensed money-lender, sold illegally-imported cigarettes and traded in counterfeit designer clothing and handbags for eight years.

Brown – known on his estate as Canadian Paul or The Money Man – was a familiar sight as he drove around in his American saloon car.

But his law breaking came to an end when police raided his home in Bishop Auckland while he was away on holiday in June 2009, Teesside Crown Court heard. Officers found loan ledgers containing the names of 123 people, thousands of cigarettes on which £46,000 duty had been evaded and fake tracksuits and Tshirts.

Brown’s daughter, Jennifer, used her bank account to deposit and then withdraw £4,000 of his money.

The 24-year-old pleaded guilty to converting criminal property and was given a three-month prison sentence, suspended for 12 months, with supervision.

Recorder Michael Slater told the supermarket worker that he was not locking her up because she had recently given birth to a daughter and had never been in trouble.

Her 52-year-old Canadaborn father admitted nine specimen charges of engaging in activity requiring a licence when not a licensee between 2001 and 2009.

He also pleaded guilty to evading duty, two counts of having goods bearing false trademarks, and converting or concealing criminal property at an earlier hearing.

His barrister, Christopher Baker, said Brown would find it hard to cope with prison because of his illnesses, which include sleep apnoea, for which he has medication.

Mr Recorder Slater told him: “The combination of all three activities means I have no choice but to impose an immediate sentence of custody in your case.”

The judge described the money-lending operation as “large-scale and elaborate”.

Brown, whose address on the court papers was the same as his daughter’s, in Taylor Square, on the Woodhouse Close estate, accepted lending £77,000 to 80 people.

The annual percentage rate on one of the loans was 14,104, but Mr Baker said it was based on a short-term agreement and the interest was not much.

Ann Richardson, mitigating, said Jennifer Brown was worried about her father’s fate as he was her only family in the UK, having moved from Canada when she was 12.

Miss Richardson said the fact Brown continued to work stacking shelves at Asda “gives a lie” to the suggestion she was living the high-life from crime.