Multimillion-pound illegal vape business busted by council

AN INVESTIGATION by Swansea Council led to the taking down of an multimillion-pound operation supplying illegal vapes to shops around the UK, a court has heard.

- JASON EVANS

Trading standards officers seized some 120,000 vapes when they executed a search warrant in London more than they could fit on the lorries they had taken with them down the M4.

Lee Reynolds, prosecuting, told Swansea Crown Court an investigation by Swansea Council's trading standards department was carried out in 2022 and 2023 into the sale of illegal vapes in shops around the city.

That investigation led to the owner of Rebel Vapes in Morriston, Kashif Iqbal, from Bonymaen, being jailed for five and a half years.

The prosecutor said from phone information it was possible to identify who had been supplying Iqbal's business, and in February last year Swansea trading standards officers with assistance from the Met Police executed a search warrant at a business unit on Bridge Street in Southall, west London.

The court heard that in a rear storage area in the Buddha Vapes premises, police found a huge quantity of illegal vapes.

Some had liquid tanks as big as 20ml legal vapes are permitted to have tanks of no more than 2ml and offering up to 15,000 "puffs" compared to the 600 or 700 of legal devices.

Many of the illegal vapes originated in China.