Illegal goods are seized in swoop on businesses

Illegal goods worth almost £600,000 have been seized in a series of raids targeting cash-intensive high street businesses in West Yorkshire suspected of laundering money through mini-markets, vape shops and barber shops.

- by Dennis Morton

Throughout October, West Yorkshire Trading Standards, together with the National Crime Agency (NCA), West Yorkshire Police, and other partners, carried out a series of raids across Leeds, Wakefield, Bradford, Kirklees and Calderdale as part of Operation Machinize.

Officers seized more than 450,000 illicit cigarettes, 42.5kg of illegal rolling tobacco, and more than 5,200 illegal vapes.