MAGISTRATES have given police three months to investigate £30,000 of 'suspicious' cash which police found crammed into a carrier bag inside a car on the M6.

During a brief hearing at Carlisle’s Rickergate court, a Cumbria Constabulary financial investigator applied under Proceeds of Crime legislation to continue holding the cash.

It was found in a BMW car that was stopped by police on Friday afternoon near to the motorway’s Junction 41.

Officers became interested in the car because it stayed needlessly in the middle lane while travelling southwards.  A check of the car’s records showed it was registered in a woman’s name at two different addresses.

When the officers illuminated their blue lights, indicating that the BMW should stop, it took longer than expected to do so.

The investigator outlined how officers decided to search the car because the accounts of their journey given by the driver and his passenger did not tally.

The driver told one officer that they had been to Motherwell in Scotland to his friend’s father’s funeral. He also said that he had borrowed the car from a relative.

The passenger, questioned separately by the second officer, said he and the driver had been to Airdrie, where they had spent time with a friend whose father had died the previous year.

Due to those conflicting accounts, said the investigator, the officers decided it was appropriate to search the car.

The cash was found in a Tesco carrier bag which was in the rear footwell behind the passenger seat. It consisted of six bundles of money in Scottish notes, estimated to be around £30,000.

When questioned, then two men gave yet another conflicting account, with the passenger saying it was not his money while the driver said that it did belong to his associate. 

The investigator said: “It’s my strong belief that the money is either criminal property or intended for use in unlawful conduct.”

He asked magistrates to allow three months so the origin of the money can be investigated. Magistrates approved that application. Neither the driver nor his passenger, who hail from the Blackburn and Oldham areas respectively, were in court.