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Shop sells cigarettes for £2.50 a pack
A Preston shop has been banned from selling tobacco after an employee was caught with "fake" cigarettes.
Abdul Mall, 40, admitted planning to sell 14 packs of counterfeit Lambert & Butler cigarettes at Pound Plush in the St John's centre.
He also admitted having pouches of Golden Virginia tobacco which had no excise duty paid on them.
It is the first time Trading Standards officers have secured a tobacco sales ban on a shop in Lancashire.
Preston Magistrates Court heard Mall had been selling about 30 packs of cigarettes a week for around 2.50 – about half the recommended retail price – without the knowledge of the discount shop's owner Muniur Bagyia, Mall's son-in-law.
Trading Standards officers found cigarettes stashed in a bin bag at the store and tobacco in a van when they visited following a tip-off.
Nick McNamara, prosecuting, said the counterfeit cigarettes had probably come from China.
He said: "The genuine articles are manufactured to strict requirements, with strict controls on what they should contain in respect of tar and so forth.
"There are no such controls on counterfeit copies.
"And for every counterfeit pack sold, the public purse is effectively defrauded."
The court heard the shop, under a different owner, was prosecuted for similar offences in December last year.
John Rimmer, defending, told magistrates Mall was "extremely surprised" to discover the cigarettes were counterfeit.
He said: "Mr Mall travels. He acquired a quantity of items which he believed were simply duty free.
"In among them, it would appear, there was a quantity of Lambert & Butler which were counterfeit.
"He acted through his own stupidity."
Mall was ordered to do 100 hours unpaid work and pay a fine of 325, costs of 474.74 and 15 to a victims' fund.
The shop was banned from selling tobacco for six months, beginning from September 12.
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Weather for Preston
Thursday 09 February 2012
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