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Bargain hunting shoppers who buy counterfeit branded goods are unwittingly fuelling serious criminality including drug dealing and modern slavery, officials have warned.
Knock-off products such as fake designer handbags and football shirts can seem like harmless deals, but sellers are often linked to organised criminals who deploy deadly violence to control their empires.
Experts warn fakes can also pose a potentially deadly threat to buyers, with faulty electrical items at risk of suddenly catching fire, while beauty products are sometimes laced with arsenic, carcinogens or even rat urine.
Although many of these items are hawked on e-commerce sites or by social media influencers, officials have found a rising number are being sold on the High Street – with criminals opening ‘pop-up’ shops in vacant shopfronts.
MailOnline visited a depot at East Midlands Airport to view some of the 14,000 counterfeit items worth £4.5million that were seized as part of Operation …