Thousands of pounds worth of illegal tobacco has been seized after raids were carried out on stores and nearby flats in Swindon this morning.
Police officers supported Trading Standards with the raids on three corner shops in the road at around 10.30am, including Morya’s Market, Kubus Polski Sklep and the Zabka Polski Sklep.
Wiltshire Police say it started building intelligence on the sale of illicit tobacco after a person who purchased it from one of the stores fell ill and was taken to hospital.
Thousands of pounds worth of illegal tobacco was found, with and further illicit product found stored within nearby residential properties with links to the stores.
A specialist tobacco detecting dog – named Ricco – from Wagtail UK was involved in the search.
Talking to Wiltshire 999s at the scene, Broadgreen neighbourhood PC Nick Finning said: “We’ve been receiving a lot of complaints about illicit tobacco being sold in some of the shops, and we’ve had a complaint from someone that it has made them ill to the point they’ve had to go to hospital.
“As a result, we’ve gathered our intelligence, carried out test purchases and built up the information we needed. Trading Standards have obtained warrants for some of the residential addresses linked to the shops and we’ve executed those and had three positive finds.
“We’ve found thousands of pounds worth of tobacco. We’ve had some hidden in chest freezers, some hidden in toilets (bathrooms), and we’ve had some hidden in suitcases.”
It’s understood the shops sell counterfeit tobacco brands and generic white cigarettes which are the ones manufactured outside of the UK using unsafe ingredients.
