In Hull, underground tunnels fed sacks of illegal cigarettes to high-street mini-marts. In Swansea, officers smashed car windows to retrieve contraband stashed during the day and sold as drugs at night. And across Britain, a network of shops fronted by ‘ghost directors’ has been selling illegal tobacco, all while masking the real owners.
This is the picture painted by a year-long BBC investigation that travelled to Plymouth, Rochdale, Shrewsbury, Newport and Bradford, uncovering what it describes as “brazen criminality”. The scale, the team says, was far greater than they initially imagined when they began looking into the topic last February.
“BBC investigation uncovers brazen criminality on UK high streets, with £1bn laundered annually.”
Freedom of Information requests revealed for the first time that more than 3,600 shops across the UK had illegal goods – counterfeit cigarettes, tobacco and vapes – seized over 2024-25. The then-Home Secretary Yvette Cooper called some of the findings a “disgrace”. Throughout their reporting, BBC journalists were repeatedly attacked and threatened.
The National Crime Agency estimates that at least £1bn of criminal cash is laundered through UK high-street stores each year. For residents, the visible signs have long been a source of unease: “dodgy shops” popping up with no obvious purpose, often surrounded by rumours of money-laundering mini-marts and gang-owned vape stores.
“People want to feel safe… [going] down the local high street,” says John Herriman, chief executive of the Chartered Trading Standards Institute. “The concern is that they don’t feel as safe as they used to.”
Organised crime has always existed on the high street, says Elijah Glantz, a research fellow at the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi), a security think tank. But the investigation suggests the problem has deepened, reflecting broader trends in British society: lacklustre income growth, inequality and the boom in online shopping. High streets, the BBC says, act like a cracked mirror, offering insight into Britain’s troubles.
Some analysts argue that obvious criminality on the high street is now shaping politics, turning voters away from long-established parties and towards political newcomers. The question remains: how did it get to this – and is there a solution for the decline of Britain’s high streets?