Police have seized £70,000 worth of suspected illegal items – including a haul of cigarettes hidden inside jigsaw boxes – following a targeted operation.
On Friday officers from Northumbria Police's Operation Vienna joined forces with Trading Standards teams from both Newcastle and Gateshead Council to carry out a series of searches after receiving intelligence from the local community.
Accompanied by tobacco detection dogs YoYo, Bran and Cooper, the coordinated crackdown saw almost 80,000 cigarettes, 35kg of hand rolling tobacco and 180 non-compliant vapes seized from convenience stores, a disused barber shop, a self-storage container and a car in Bensham and Newcastle.
