Sniffer dogs help discover £500,000 worth of goods including illegal cigarettes at Walsall storage unit
Goods including illegal cigarettes and tobacco with a retail value of around £500,000 have been seized from a storage facility in Walsall.
Watch more of our videos on ShotsTV.com
and on Freeview 262 or Freely 565
Trading Standards officers at Walsall Council teamed up with West Midlands Police and a specialist dog team to search the unit on March 7.
Highly-trained sniffer dogs Griff, Cooper and Bran found there was tobacco being kept at the storage facility.
Trading Standards officers then obtained the key for the unit, which revealed 23 bin liners containing more than 500kg of processed tobacco, 1,000 packets of hand rolling tobacco (HRT), 3,000 cigarettes and counterfeit duty stamps and packaging.
The goods would have been later packaged at an illegal tobacco factory ready to be distributed across the country, Walsall Council said.
Council leader Councillor Garry Perry said: "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.”
