Sniffer dog Griff outside the storage container and one of the bin liners found with tobacco.
A huge amount of tobacco, illegal cigarettes, counterfeit duty stamps and counterfeit tobacco labelling with a retail value of approximately £500,000 was seized from a storage facility in Walsall on Friday 7 March as part of a crackdown on the illicit tobacco trade.
The seizure was undertaken as part of Operation Shadow, which aims to disrupt the wholesale supply of illicit tobacco as well as retail.
Walsall Council Trading Standards in partnership with West Midlands Police and a specialist search dog team, searched one storage facility. Sniffer dogs Griff, Cooper and Bran, who are highly trained tobacco dogs assisted the Trading Standards team. All three dogs indicated that there was tobacco being stored in the unit. Trading Standards then obtained the key for the unit, which revealed 23 bin liners containing over 500kg of processed tobacco, 1,000 packets of hand rolling tobacco (HRT), 3,000 cigarettes and counterfeit duty stamps and packaging. These goods would have been later packaged at an illegal tobacco factory ready to be distributed across the country.
Further investigations continue to clamp down on such illegal products.
“ This is an incredibly huge seizure for our Trading Standards and Police colleagues, and with the help of sniffer dogs Griff, Bran and Cooper I commend them all for carrying out this operation.
Illegal tobacco has serious consequences for our community and health and carrying out these seizures help to stop these products from being packaged and supplied across the country. It is also linked to organised criminal activity including human trafficking, drugs and terrorism.
Our Trading Standards and Police teams take illicit tobacco very seriously and we will use every enforcement technique at our disposal to disrupt this type of activity from happening within our borough. “
Councillor Garry Perry
Leader of Walsall Council