A drug-detecting dog called Boo became the hero of the hour after sniffing out around £1500 of fake tobacco during a search operation of Perth shops.
Information received, which indicated that fake or illicit, duty-evading cigarettes and other tobacco products were being sold led to the visits as part of Operation CeCe Scotland.
The joint initiative between Scottish Trading Standards services and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) tackles the illegal tobacco trade at retail level.
The searches were carried out by the council’s Trading Standards team, in partnership with Police Scotland.
Officers were accompanied by Scotland’s Consumer Protection tobacco-detecting dog Boo, who visited six retail premises but only one was found to have suspected illicit/counterfeit tobacco items for sale at that time.
The counterfeit products that were seized have a retail value of around £1500, which equates to a loss of around £950 in tobacco revenue for the UK Treasury.
In total the illegal trade has an annual cost nationally of £2 billion and Perth and Kinross Council says it “harms legitimate businesses” in the region.
Housing and social wellbeing convener, Councillor Tom McEwan, said: “This successful outcome was the result of partnership working with our colleagues at Police Scotland and the HMRC, and shows our commitment to zero tolerance of counterfeit or illicit products being sold in Perth and Kinross.
“We don’t know where these counterfeit products originated from and while they may have seemed like a bargain for potential customers, they are unlikely to have been produced in line with the required quality controls and so may contain extremely harmful substances.”
Anyone with information about the illegal sale of tobacco is encouraged to report it online at https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/hm-revenue-customs/contact/report-fraud-to-hmrc or call the Fraud Hotline on 0800 788 887.
