Tess Vaughan was sentenced for money laundering at Liverpool Crown Court this week, with the court accepting she had no involvement in the criminal enterprise that provided the dirty cash she benefited from. Instead, it was said on her behalf that she had shown "a lack of questioning, a lack of suspicion" about where those tens of thousands of pounds came from.
Vaughan used the cash to send her children to private school, splash out on a luxury Audi and heaps of designer gear, and pay the utility bills at her Childwall semi-detached, extended house. The money, around £41,000 in total, was primarily provided by her long-term partner and father to her two children, Timmy Donovan.
Donovan's criminal history
Donovan, 41, has an infamous reputation on Merseyside because of his repeated involvement in some of the most serious crime imaginable. His criminal record includes EncroChat drug dealing, multi-million pound money laundering, and most significantly, the manslaughter of a Merseyside Police officer.
In 2014, off-duty officer Neil Doyle, who was newly-wed, was confronted on a Christmas night out by Donovan and Andrew Taylor. The pair taunted PC Doyle by saying "evening officer", before warning him and his off-duty colleagues "not to front me". Newly-wed PC Doyle was hit with a "piledriver punch" and died, while his colleague PC Robert Marshall was knocked to the ground and stamped on. Donovan fled the UK with the help of his partner's brother, Stephen Vaughan Jnr, who gave him his Mercedes.
Donovan, originally from the Huyton area, drove through the Eurotunnel and remained at large for a number of weeks. He was arrested at Dusseldorf Airport by German police attempting to fly back to the UK. Donovan was sentenced to six years and 10 months in prison; a term that PC Doyle's widow Sarah tried to challenge due to her belief it was unduly lenient.
EncroChat offending
Donovan was released back into the community on licence, but instead of repaying society, he quickly found himself in the midst of serious and organised crime through the use of an EncroChat phone. Donovan's own lawyer would tell a hearing at Manchester Crown Court that when the convicted killer left prison he "absorbed" himself in activity to try and distract himself from what he had done.
He did so by adopting the encrypted handles "Astralcleaner" and "Legendarytooth", using them to become the "leading player" in both a drug conspiracy and a separate money laundering plot. Donovan "was involved in conversations about pricing and fed that down to those below him in the chain," a prosecutor told his sentencing. National Crime Agency (NCA) investigators, provided with messages after European law enforcement hacked the EncroChat platform, found evidence that he discussed the supply of both cocaine and heroin while also collecting and accounting for money owed to him and his gang.
He directed five other associates in transferring physical cash to a car dealership where it was then turned into digital currency. He ordered the small gaggle of co-conspirators, which included James Vaughan, another of his partner's brothers, to organise money transfers, which were dropped off at Wavertree Car Centre by two older men who were nicknamed Boris and Theresa in EncroChat messages.
Scale of laundering and sentencing
The amount of money that Donovan and his gang laundered was at least £10m. The scale of the money laundering was evidenced by a spreadsheet, created by Donovan, which showed money owed by and to him. This included "3,424,000 owed in en" and "934000 all got it now to come off bill".
The car centre was raided by the NCA and the gang was arrested. When officers went to Donovan and Vaughan's home, almost every door in his house was specially reinforced. While Donovan was in custody, police carried out further enquiries on his EncroChat device and found messages referencing "bits, tops, bats and bulls", which are all slang terms for various class A drugs. He would later admit being involved in the supply of nearly 24kg of cocaine and 1kg of heroin between December 2019 and June 2020.
Like many EncroChat cases, Donovan was held on remand for a significant amount of time before he was eventually sentenced to 14-and-a-half-years in jail after he pleaded guilty to two counts of conspiracy to supply class A drugs and money laundering. Donovan was joined in the dock by James Vaughan, who collected, stored and counted money. Following his arrest, Vaughan fled to Spain, before being extradited back to the UK in March 2024 to face criminal charges. He was sentenced to four years and three months.
Other members of the operation included Aaron O'Sullivan, who helped Donovan supply cocaine and launder money, and Christopher Roper, who worked at the car centre where he stored large amounts of criminal cash in return for a fee. They were sentenced to seven-and-a-half years and three years, 10 months respectively.
During Donovan's sentencing it was heard he was "immensely remorseful" for killing PC Doyle and a psychologist's report found he was struggling with PTSD and anxiety. Donovan was said to want to give back and had been doing an "enormous amount of work" as a prison listener working with inmates who were struggling with suicidal thoughts. It was said that Donovan's sentence was a "watershed moment to have a release date to focus on". Despite his apparent determination to turn the corner and help people in prison, Donovan's offending has been at the highest level of criminality.
Vaughan's sentencing and proceeds of crime
As well as the crimes he's been convicted of, EncroChat messages showed Donovan was in contact with upper echelons of Merseyside's criminal fraternity including the Huyton Firm. The ECHO previously reported how Donovan liaised with the major crime gang as they sought a dad and son suspected of robbing £1m of cocaine from their stash house. Donovan was the go-between man for Vincent Coggins' gang, as they looked to blackmail Brian Maxwell and his dad Brian Sr. Analysis of EncroChat messages showed Donovan was nicknamed "cop killer" by the gang.
As part of the NCA's investigations into Donovan, officers turned their attention to Tess Vaughan and noticed major discrepancies between the life she was leading and her declarations to the tax man. While officers believed the cash came from Donovan, they could not rule out James Vaughan, her brother, as a source either. Tess Vaughan's sentencing was told the investigation found regular cash deposits, sometimes multiple deposits on the same day, into a number of different bank accounts.
She answered no comment during her police interview before entering guilty pleas to two money laundering charges on the first day of her trial on August 24. Another charge, relating to the seizure of cash from a house cupboard, was ordered to lie on the file after the prosecution decided against seeking a trial on the matter. It was said that the mum had "got her life together" since Donovan was sent back to prison in 2022 and had become financially independent by running her own business. She was sentenced to 18 months in prison, suspended for 18 months.
Vaughan will now face a proceeds of crime hearing where investigators will recoup the profits she benefited from. Donovan faces his own serious crime prevention order and confiscation order hearings, to be held in Manchester in January. Given the time Donovan spent on remand before his eventual sentence, coupled with the fact that the prison network is overcrowded, he will likely be released long before 2030. We will see if he, and indeed the Vaughan family, keep their names off the region's court lists.
