Crime boss 'fights jail sentence'

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Crime boss Terry Adams is considering an appeal against his seven-year jail sentence for money laundering, his lawyers have said.

Adams, 52, from Barnet, north London, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to launder his income from crime.

Last week he was jailed for seven years after the Old Bailey heard he was worth about £11m but had no work history and was paying no tax.

Similar charges against his wife, Ruth, were dropped during the police inquiry.

He comes with a pedigree, as one of a family whose name had a currency all of its own in the underworld Andrew Mitchell QC <a class="" href="/1/hi/uk/6342521.stm">How family ruled underworld</a>

Adams was also ordered to pay £750,000 compensation for the £1m he laundered.

His lawyers, Malletts Solicitors, said: "Mr Adams... together with his legal team, is in the process of considering an appeal against that sentence."

Adams, believed to have been head of the Adams criminal family, made so much money from crime he was able to retire at 35, the court heard.

Sentencing him on Friday, Judge Timothy Pontius told him "you have a fertile, cunning and imaginative mind capable of sophisticated, complex and dishonest financial manipulation".

Charges against Ruth Adams were dropped

The prosecution accepted that he had not been involved in organised crime since 1993.

But he had placed illicit money with various people and used it to live a life of luxury.

From June 1997 to February 1999, an undercover listening operation was mounted by MI5 at his then home in Finchley.

Adams was charged in May 2003 but had delayed the court case for four years and changed his legal team three times.