AN internet betting fraudster who was murdered with his girlfriend switched money between bank accounts to hide its illegitimate origins, a court was told yesterday.

Zhen Xing Yang and his lover, Xi Zhou, both 25, banked £233,000 – more than ten times their declared joint earnings – and managed to send £45,000 home to his mother in China, Newcastle Crown Court heard.

Restaurant worker Guang Hui Cao, 31, denies murdering the couple in their Newcastle flat, last August.

Mr Zhen, known as Kevin, and his girlfriend, who was called Cici, were found dead on separate beds having suffered horrific injuries.

He was hit repeatedly with a hammer-like weapon and had his throat slit, while she was bound and gagged and placed face down on the bed, so she suffocated. She was also hit about the head with the heavy weapon.

The jury has been told that Mr Zhen made money from an internet football betting scam.

He used his Mastercard to pay for tickets to travel to games, the court heard.

Mr Zhen also made money by selling false qualifications.

Paul Gullan, a financial investigator working for Northumbria Police, studied the couple’s banking activity and said Mr Zhen used “layering” as a way to hide the origin of his money. That meant transferring cash deposited in one account into another.

“It would suggest to me that the movement of money was an attempt, albeit quite basic, to conceal the origins of the original funds,” he told the court.

Sums deposited into his accounts were often for £500, £1,000 or even £5,000 at a time, the jury heard.

Tax records show that from 2002 until his murder last year, Mr Zhen, a graduate, had declared earnings of only £2,771.

Miss Xi worked in a cinema then took a job as a £14,000-a-year waitress at the Wagamama restaurant, yet saw more than £140,000 go through her bank accounts, the court heard.

Mr Gullan agreed with Paul Sloan, mitigating, that the account history was “consistent with monies emanating from these fraudulent activities”.

The trial continues.