A criminal caught in a Kilburn side street collecting £160,000 in a suitcase claimed he was not laundering drugs money - just conducting business 'the Albanian way'.
Eduart Gjurra, 24, was watched by police taking delivery of the suitcase in a quiet road in Kilburn in November 2014.
When officers stopped him, they found the bag in his Volkswagen van and inside was almost £150,000 in sterling and almost 25,000 euros.
Elsewhere in the van, they found bundles of bank notes, totalling £4,000 and over 135,000 euros.
The cash had been treated with a substance which would prevent sniffer dogs from detecting it at border control areas.
Gjurra denied he had done anything wrong, but was convicted of three counts of money laundering at the Old Bailey in September last year and was jailed for a total of seven years.
'Prosecution evidence wrongly admitted'
His lawyers took his case to the Court of Appeal on June 21, claiming that prosecution evidence had been wrongly admitted by the trial judge.
The evidence was from "experts", who confirmed that many of the aspects of the case were consistent with the laundering of drugs money.
That included the presence of large numbers of 500 Euro notes in the bundles and the types of communication between those involved in the handover.
Barrister Richard Furlong said Gjurra, of Lyndhurst Road, Thornton Heath, had claimed all along that the transaction was a legitimate property deal.
Dealing in cash is common in Albania, he said, describing it as a "grey economy".
But rejecting the appeal bid, Judge Melbourne Inman QC said the evidence included in the trial was rightly admitted.
It helped the jury decide elements of the case which were "potentially relevant", he said.
Judge Inman, sitting with Lord Justice Burnett and Mr Justice Edis, rejected the challenge and upheld the convictions.
