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A shop owner has been handed a suspended sentence for selling counterfeit cigarettes and tobacco from his businesses in Pontypool and Caerphilly town.

Torfaen Trading Standards Officers visited a shop trading as Ponty Market, on Osborne Road, in February 2020, following a complaint. They discovered £2,200-worth of illegal cigarettes and tobacco hidden behind an electronically-operated wall.

The find came after officers previously found £1,744-worth of counterfeit and foreign cigarettes in a secret compartment in a table at a business operated by the same owner, in Commercial Street, in September 2019.

Illegal tobacco valued at £391 was also found concealed in a gas cooker at the premises during a joint operation with HMRC officials in December 2019.

In total, 4,480 illegal cigarettes and four kilograms of tobacco were seized from the shops owned by Mohammed Ahmad. It was estimated the value of the fraud was up to £100,000.

An investigation found some of the cigarettes and tobacco pouches were counterfeit, which means they were produced illegally and often carry additional significant health risks, and others were foreign brands that cannot be sold in the UK.

It also found Ahmad was the director of a number of companies including Ponty Market Elf Ltd and Vivid Profit Ltd, based in Pontypool, and Quick 1 Shop, on Cardiff Road, Caerphilly, where counterfeit cigarettes and tobacco had been sold.

All of Ahmad’s companies have since been dissolved.

Earlier this month Ahmad, of Fford Ottoway, Cardiff, appeared in Cardiff Crown Court after previously admitting operating a fraudulent business and selling illegal, counterfeit and foreign labelled duty avoided cigarettes and tobacco.

He was sentenced to a 12-month suspended sentence, 250 hours of unpaid work, six days of rehabilitation activity, and disqualified from being a company director for five years. He was also ordered to pay £3,768 costs within six months.

The judge also ordered forfeiture and destruction of the illegal tobacco.