£1.5 million of fake clothes and shoes seized in Walsall raid
Counterfeit clothing and footwear worth an estimated £1.5 million has been seized in Walsall.
More than 7,500 items were found during a raid at a self-storage facility in the south of the borough after trading standards officers were tipped off as part of an ongoing investigation.
Council and police officers forced their way into a van and opened a number of containers full of fake goods at the site.
Five trading standards officers, five officers from the National Markets Group and four officers from West Midlands Police were involved in the operation.
David Elrington, head of community safety and enforcement at Walsall Council, said: "Our trading standards officers work hard behind the scenes in their efforts to keep us all safe from shoddy and often dangerous counterfeit items.
"While some items may not be dangerous, they will not be of the quality of the brands who are frankly being ripped off and this also impacts on our local businesses selling genuine branded products of good quality.
"Often counterfeiters may also be involved in and fund other organised criminal activity such as drugs, trafficking and slavery so cracking down on this will ultimately help prevent other crime.
"Having £1.5m of counterfeit goods seized will hopefully send a strong message out, don’t do this in Walsall, because we’re all watching you."
The operation was carried out under Operation Flash, a national project concerning the use of self-storage units to hide large quantities of counterfeit products destined for markets and other outlets across the UK.
