Over the course of 12 months, BBC News has gone undercover to expose the shocking reality of organised crime taking over our High Streets leading to an “urgent” Home Office investigation, multiple arrests across the country and pledges to change the law.
In April 2025 the BBC joined the NCA as it raided barbers, mini-marts and vape shops in response to growing intelligence reports that some of these shops were being used for money laundering and illegal working.
In May and June of last year the team found secret underground tunnels supplying sacks of illegal cigarettes to High Street mini-marts in Hull, with authorities warning us that there was a “war” against organised crime that they couldn’t win, with the profits from counterfeit tobacco now rivalling “heroin and cocaine” in a black market worth up to £6bn a year.
The then Immigration Minister, Seema Malhotra, described what the BBC had found as a “national scandal” and the then-Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, later said it was a “disgrace”.
In July, mass Freedom of Information requests revealed for the first time that 3,700 illegal shops had operated across the UK.
In November last year, we exposed asylum seekers buying and selling High Street mini marts for cash and criminal kingpins erasing £60,000 illegal working fines, and exposed a Kurdish organised crime gang operating on High Streets the length of Britain.
In response to our investigations, Mahmood launched an “urgent” investigation led by the NCA, Immigration Enforcement, HMRC and police forces from across the country. She said the BBC’s evidence proved that “the system was broken” and demonstrated a pull factor in the small boat crisis.
In March of this year a senior council worker repeatedly shared with West Midlands authorities reports of children as young as 11 being sexually abused in High Street mini-marts and last month undercover reports exposed how cocaine, cannabis, laughing gas and prescription pills were being offered for sale. One street we visited in the West Midlands was described as “lawless” by an anonymous law enforcement source.
In response, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer said the government was “absolutely focused” on tackling such criminality, pledging stronger powers and more police officers to do so.
The NCA said 950 people had been arrested and more than £10m worth of goods seized over the past 18 months and the new unit would help it target and disrupt more “high harm offenders”.
Sal Melki, deputy director of illicit finance at the NCA, said: “This criminal activity makes our communities less safe and less prosperous.
“It undermines legitimate business, deprives public services of tax revenues, and fuels a range of predicate offences such as the drugs trade, illicit goods, trafficking, and organised immigration crime.”
