Police officers smash through the back doors of a bright, modern barber shop in the market town of Shrewsbury.
Inside they immediately detain two men – who we are later told are Kurdish asylum seekers. Both men are later released.
It is the first of six raids that day where police seize thousands of pounds in cash and illicit vapes.
The officers are here with a warrant to search the premises because of suspected money laundering. They say their intelligence also suggests the shop is linked to sale of illicit cigarettes and vapes, illegal immigration and drug-dealing.
Det Insp Daniel Fenn, on his ninth raid of the week, says some barber shops such as this are claiming income of £100,000 to £150,000 a month. “They aren’t getting that amount of customers to warrant that amount of money.”
CCTV in other barbers that have been raided has shown they do not have many customers, so footage of this one will also be examined, DI Fenn says.
The raid in Shrewsbury was one of 265 carried out across England and Wales last month as part of a crackdown on High Street businesses – often Turkish-style barbers, vape shops and mini-marts – suspected of being fronts for international crime gangs.
Politicians and members of the public have raised concerns about many of these businesses which have boomed even while High Streets appear to be in decline. The average number of barbers per person in England and Wales has doubled in the past 10 years, according to commercial property analysts Green Street.
Now the National Crime Agency (NCA) says it has launched the crackdown, called Operation Machinize, in response to growing intelligence reports that some of these shops are being used for money laundering – where gangs falsely present the proceeds of criminal operations as if they were earnings from legitimate businesses handling large amounts of cash.
Despite these shops operating openly for years on High Streets and attracting widespread local suspicion, this is the first co-ordinated action of its kind by police, tax and immigration inspectors and Trading Standards officers. We were given exclusive access to dozens of raids carried out by Greater Manchester and West Mercia Police.
Det Insp Melanie Johnson, who led the operation for Greater Manchester Police, said her own local High Street had 10 barbers and a mini-mart, which was “not sustainable”.
“As a mum to young children, I want them to grow up feeling safe, in a community that isn’t derelict, a High Street that isn’t falling apart, and isn’t populated by criminality,” she said.
During the operation:
- Police targeted a series of linked mini-marts in Rochdale that they suspect are “fronts” for illegal activity, staffed by Kurdish, Iraqi and Iranian asylum seekers. Officers later said some of the staff were working in the UK illegally
- A cannabis farm was found in Leigh and over 150 plants seized. Also found during raids across Greater Manchester were brown powder believed to be heroin, vials of testosterone, nitrous oxide, Xanax tranquilliser and a machete
- 35 people were arrested, and 55 suspected illegal immigrants were questioned. Three potential victims of modern slavery were identified
- Bank accounts and assets worth over £1m were later frozen and £40,000 in cash was seized
The Shrewsbury raid was on a barber shop in the centre of town, one of five close together which were also targeted in the operation.
“Members of the public are angry. They can see these fronts are there,” says Det Insp Fenn. “The criminals feel they are hidden here. They think they can come to sleepy areas such as Shrewsbury and Telford and won’t be found.”
It looks like the two men detained here have been living in the rooms above the barbers – there are clothes, shoes and food scattered on the floor as we move from room to room. The flats are barely furnished, with just a mattress and blankets on the floor.
Det Insp Fenn says organised crime groups are different all over the country, but here he has been seeing familiar patterns of shops staffed with asylum seekers or illegal immigrants, many of the people in the barber shops being from Kurdish backgrounds.
The detective says that behind the front of a High Street business “the main criminality may be modern-day slavery, exploitation and drugs”.
Despite the barber shop’s supposed high revenue, police find an unpaid £7,000 gas bill along with the seized cash and illicit vapes.
Legitimate barbers say they want to see a registration scheme and a crackdown on unscrupulous operators. Gareth Penn, chief executive of the Hair and Barber Council, said the rise of illegal barbers has led to fungal infections, such as ringworm, from improperly cleaned equipment.
“This has a massive impact on legitimate businesses as they can’t compete against those with few of the costs genuine barbers have,” said Mr Penn.
The NCA estimates that £12bn in illicit cash is laundered in the UK every year, some of it through criminal front organisations on the High Street. Their numbers appeared to surge as shop vacancies grew in the wake of the pandemic, creating an opening for criminal gangs.
Politicians began to demand action, prompting law enforcement, tax, immigration and Trading Standards agencies to develop this co-ordinated response.
The NCA now has to analyse what Operation Machinize has uncovered for evidence of fraud and money laundering, to try to trace the networks behind these shops and stop the flow of criminal cash.
Rachael Herbert, deputy director of economic crime at the NCA, said the presence of criminal front organisations “gives the perception from the local community that criminals have the run of the High Street” and contributes to the demise of shopping centres.
“Money laundering is not a victimless crime. It’s associated with some of the most high-harm and violent crimes on the street,” she said.
The NCA believes some barber shops or mini-marts are used as fronts for drug-trafficking, people-smuggling, modern slavery and child sexual exploitation. These kinds of shops have also been linked to the illicit importation of tobacco, vapes and firearms.
In 2023, it secured the conviction of one Iranian Kurdish barber shop owner, Hewa Rahimpur, who was using his shop in London as a base for a far-reaching criminal organisation which smuggled 10,000 people to the UK in small boats.
“These businesses also evade an enormous amount of tax. That is money that doesn’t go to the exchequer to be used for local communities,” Ms Herbert said.
Seeing illicit products like vapes, cigarettes and tobacco on sale is also a red flag to the investigating teams.
In Rochdale, the sniffer dog shakes with excitement, her tail wagging frantically, above a hole concealing dozens of boxes of illegally imported tobacco products in one shop.
“We could hit this shop every day for a week and we’d still find stuff. It’s non-stop,” Dennis Chalmers from Trading Standards says. “These shops are just set up to do this.”
Outside on the street, Mr Chalmers gestures to half a dozen shops on the street which he has visited and believes to be linked. “They seem to be popping up everywhere. There’s like five, six hairdressers in one row.”
He estimates across Rochdale there are more than 20 businesses that are fronts for criminal organisations and he says he sees many of the same people from Iran, Iraq and Kurdistan working in them.
In one shop, a worker who says he is Kurdish claims he has only worked there for two days.
“Two days?” asks Mr Chalmers. “Even though I saw you here last week?”
The shop worker tells the Trading Standards officer he doers not know his boss’s name.
Mr Chalmers tells us: “The danger is, because you don’t know who is behind these businesses, as the employee doesn’t know who the owner is, when we try and chase them they just keep changing, changing.”
Companies House documents show the shop address has been used to register four almost-identically named businesses since 2019, three of which faced action to strike them off the company register for failing to file accounts properly.
Immigration officers say the Kurdish man in the shop has been in the country for four years, but has been granted the right to work while he waits for his asylum application to be decided.
Close by, police and Trading Standards officers show us more mini-marts that have been left empty – they say staff disappeared as soon as police arrived.
Outside one, a man approaches us laughing. It is clear he is not put off by the police action. He tells us he is from Iran and, when questioned, claims he does not work in the shop. We return later and see him inside the mini-mart, apparently working.
“We see him every day,” says Mr Chalmers in frustration. “It’s just a game to them. A dangerous one.”
He says he would like more resources to get on top of the issue and greater powers to shut down these premises more quickly.
Security Minister Dan Jarvis said the operation “highlights the scale and complexity of the criminality our towns and cities face”.
“High Street crime undermines our security, our borders, and the confidence of our communities, and I am determined to take the decisive action necessary to bring those responsible to justice,” he said.
But so far only 10 of the shops that were raided last month across England have been shut down. The majority of the shops we visited were back up and running within minutes of the police leaving.
In Rochdale, we watched as Trading Standards officers identified a man they said was linked to the mini-marts walking from shop to shop with a backpack, which they believed contained illicit tobacco to restock the shelves.
The challenge for authorities now is to stop the problem at its root and dismantle the suspected serious organised crime gangs – which may have been profiting in plain sight for years on our High Streets.
Additional reporting by Rebecca Wearn
Get our flagship newsletter with all the headlines you need to start the day. Sign up here.
