A Gloucester store owner who was selling illegal tobacco has been prosecuted after being captured making the sales on the store’s own CCTV.
At Cheltenham Magistrates Court on 9th November, treatment Tanya Abdulrahan Fakieh, 35, owner of Kingsholm Stores, Gloucester, pleaded guilty to a charge of possession of illegal cigarettes under the Consumer Protection Act 1987.
In February 2015, following intelligence that the shop was selling illegal tobacco, officers from Gloucestershire Trading Standards Service seized 37 packs of illegal cigarettes.
The Worcester Street store is obliged to operate CCTV as part of the conditions listed in its licence to sell alcohol and the footage obtained by trading standards officers clearly showed the illegal sales taking place.
None of the seized items were correctly marked with the required warning messages and none showed the required fiscal mark ‘UK DUTY PAID’.
Fakieh was fined £600 and ordered to pay costs of £569.63, and a victim surcharge of £60. The courts made an order for the forfeiture and destruction of the seized tobacco.
Gloucestershire Trading Standards Service is working hard to stop traders from selling illegal and potentially dangerous goods. Two other cases were also heard in court on the same day.
Mohammed Alo, 45, of Sezon Delicatessen, High Street, Cheltenham, and Nabaz Mahmud Mustafa, 29, trading as Zrodelko, High Street, Cheltenham, also pleaded guilty to selling illegal tobacco.
Officers made seizures in March 2015 after receiving information that the shops were selling illegal tobacco but both shops continued to sell illegal tobacco after the seizures.
When officers returned to Sezon Delicatessen in May they seized more tobacco from a flat above the shop. A hidden tube ran from a hole in the floor of the flat above to the till area of the shop below. A person in the flat was in communication with the shop below via an open Skype line.
When they heard a request for illegal tobacco they sent the required product down the tube where the person in the shop was then able to sell it.
Both Sezon Delicatessen and Zrodelko are now under new ownership.
The estimated street value of tobacco seized from Sezon Delicatessen was £1900, and from Zrodelko, £1015.
None of the seized items were correctly marked with the required warning messages and none had the required fiscal mark ‘UK DUTY PAID’, some were also found to be counterfeit.
In all cases the illegal cigarettes were being sold at £3 a pack, a third of the price of some premium brand legitimate cigarettes.
Both cases were adjourned until 10am on 19th November at Cheltenham Magistrates Court for all options probation reports to be prepared.
Cllr Will Windsor-Clive, cabinet member responsible for trading standards, said: “The work our trading standards team does to tackle illegal tobacco sales is helping to protect honest traders who are facing unfair competition. Once again offenders have been brought before the courts as a result of that hard work.”
Cllr Andrew Gravells, cabinet member for public health, added: “Trading standards does a vital job to protect the public from the health risks which illegal tobacco and cigarettes pose. Illegal tobacco is cheap tobacco, and the cheaper it is the more likely local people are to continue smoking instead of cutting down or stopping.”
Anyone with information about illegal tobacco in their area can report it anonymously by contacting the Citizens Advice Consumer Service on 03454 04 05 06, or online at http://glos.tradingstandards.uk