SLOWLY prising away a kick board at the bottom of some shelves, the police find exactly what they are looking for.
Dozens of cartons of brightly packaged cigarettes, which are being sold illegally in the UK.
They are often flogged for as little as £5 a packet and show none of the graphic warnings smokers here are used to now.
The crime.
Between April 2023 and March 2024, Trading Standards and police forces across the UK recovered 1.36billion illegal cigarettes, which equates to a revenue value of £678million.
In Blackburn last month, as The Sun watches, police pull out carton after carton of the smuggled cigarettes in their latest warrant for Operation Wanderstar, which has so far seen them raid 22 local stores.
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In October alone, they have recovered £200,000 of illicit tobacco and vapes across Nelson, Blackburn, Oswaldtwistle, Lancaster, Morecambe and Preston.
Detective Sergeant Rob Costigan, from Lancashire Constabulary’s Economic Crime Unit, said: “Illegal cigarettes have become a fairly widespread problem.
“Selling these products undermines the economy and hurts legitimate businesses.
‘Illicit tobacco is linked to organised crime’
“In this shop, we found products in the back stockroom and loads of cigarettes under the kick board of some shelves in the front.
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“You wouldn’t hide it if it wasn’t illegal. We could tell from the packaging that they didn’t comply with our standards in the UK.”
A recent illegally by migrants who are paying people to be registered as business directors on official documents.
They linked more than 100 shops across the UK to a handful of ghost directorships, and discovered Kurdish Facebook groups used by illegal migrants selling shops to each other.
Migrant Surchi, who runs a shop in Crewe, was filmed telling undercover BBC reporters: “I have customers that are 12 years old, I don’t have any problem with them.”
Not all shops selling illegal cigarettes are linked to migrants, but they commit a crime by selling a stolen or counterfeit product.
At 7 Days Mini Market, owned by a man known to police for selling illegal tobacco products, brands including Lambert & Butler and Marlboro Gold were found.
Also seized were Top Gun and Platinum menthol cigarettes, which are “illegal whites” — meaning they have not been made to EU or UK regulations.
The packs, often made in Dubai or Belarus, may contain dangerous chemicals or carcinogens banned from regulated tobacco.
Professor Emmeline Taylor, a criminologist at City St George’s University of London, told The Sun: “Criminals might be focusing on smuggled, stolen and counterfeit tobacco because it’s lucrative, and the risks are low. But if that market were shut down, many would simply move on to other crimes such as drugs, firearms or trafficking. These are career criminals, not opportunists.
“You don’t set up a counterfeit tobacco operation or smuggle on the scale needed to supply a whole town unless you’re deeply embedded in organised crime.”
Alongside the contraband cigarettes, police found counterfeit cash and illegal single-use Lost Mary vapes.
They left with five evidence bags filled with £15,000 of illicit tobacco comprised of 14,000 packets of illegal cigarettes and 3kg of illicit tobacco.
The operation was coordinated by the National Crime Agency’s nation-wide crackdown targeting cash-based money laundering and illegal trade.
Across the UK, illicit tobacco in the latest blitz.
Former Met Police Detective Peter Bleksley told The Sun: “The small boats crisis and the growing tobacco black market are inextricably linked. If you come over on a small boat, you can’t get a normal job, and many are forced into the underworld to make money.
“The tobacco black market is already growing, and with illegal immigrants it has a constant stream of workers. If Rachel Reeves keeps raising the duty on cigarettes, normal people are going to be driven into the arms of these criminals because buying smokes off them will be cheaper.”
The penalty for selling illegal tobacco is a fine of up to £10,000 and sometimes forced business closure notices.
But illicit tobacco smuggling has skyrocketed in recent years, with experts saying weak punishments and the ease of setting up as an illegal dealer are behind the rise.
Professor Georgios Antonopoulos, a criminologist at Northumbria University, Newcastle, said: “I knew tobacco smugglers who paid foreign students to bring back cigarettes from abroad that they can sell on for profit.
“And some smugglers will buy from legitimate manufacturers for other markets, then bring them to the UK to sell under the counter.
“Most of the cost of cigarettes in the UK is tax, so buying cigarettes wholesale and selling them on gives people huge profits.
“I know of extortionists in Newcastle who switched to the illicit tobacco trade because the profit is high and the punishment low.”
A survey by the Tobacco Manufacturers’ Association found a fifth of us regularly buy contraband cigarettes, and that illicit fags can cost as little as £3 for a packet of 20.
The average price for a 20-packet of cigarettes is £14-£18.
Legal cigs incur “ad valorem” tax of 16.5 per cent on the retail price, plus £6.69 duty tax plus 20 per cent VAT.
The UK has the most expensive tobacco prices in Europe.
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Dale Stacey, from Japan Tobacco International, which produces Benson & Hedges cigarettes, told The Sun: “More needs to be done to protect hard-working, law-abiding retailers who are being undermined.
“We know from our research that illicit tobacco is linked to organised crime. More needs to be done to make the consequences visible.”