Inside the raid where dog finds hidden cigarette stash

Griff the sniffer dog will not move. He is inside a shop suspected of illegal trading and, while his paws scratch inside a kitchen cabinet, he looks at his handler and barks to signal something is here.

I have joined Lincolnshire Police and Trading Standards on a chilly evening as they simultaneously raid four shops in Boston, Lincolnshire.

All are suspected to be fronts for illegal activity from the sale of illicit cigarettes.

It is dark in the market town. The faint hum of the town's fair can be heard in the distance as the flashing blue lights of police cars illuminate the streets.

Inside one corner shop in a room behind the counter, Griff is stubborn and stays put while wagging his tail.

His handler Stuart Philips tells me he "knows for a fact something is here".

Moments later, Philips uses an axe to smash through the cabinet Griff was barking at.

The team gasps as a hidden room is revealed.

I shine my torch inside the hatch. A large black fridge sits in the compact space.

"They've put a fridge in here to hold the tobacco because the fridge is obviously sealed," Phillips says.

I crawl through the cabinet into the secret room where I can see the fridge's shelves are full of suspected counterfeit cigarettes.

The space is claustrophobic. Parts of the ceiling are frayed and dangle above my head. It smells musty and sawdust lurks in the air.

Philips describes it as a "sophisticated" hiding place and says he suspects the fridge and a nearby reed diffuser were being used to mask the scent, but this was no match for Griff.

"He'd only been in the shop for a couple of minutes before he got that and started indicating," Philips says.

"He's done pretty good. Happy with that," he smiles.

The team tells me "cash-rich" businesses like this have, in some cases, been linked to criminal roots and could have links to modern day slavery and money laundering.

There is a strong sense of being watched as a large CCTV screen mounted to the wall provides several views of inside and outside the small shop.

The man behind the counter tells officers he is on holiday and had come to Boston for a barbecue.

Soon, Immigration Officers arrive. Their checks do not flag anything, so they leave.

Lincolnshire Police said the man was not arrested.

At the all-team briefing at Boston Police Station earlier in the evening, prior to the raids, almost 30 people were packed around a table.

Dubbed Operation Machinize, the raids involve multiple agencies.

One officer sums it up by telling the room there are "more powers here than Harry Potter".

He instructs teams to keep a sharp eye for keys within the shops.

Later, in the shop, senior Trading Standards officer Marshall shows me two fobs which were recovered.

"Sometimes these will be used to open up electronic hides where they store the cigarettes," she says.

Marshall tells me about the dangers of illicit cigarettes.

"Any cigarettes that are counterfeit, we've got no idea what's in them," she says.

"It's important people know what they're buying, what they're purchasing and what the effects are."

Lincolnshire Police said, across the four premises raided, about 100,000 suspected illicit cigarettes were seized along with a quantity of hand rolling tobacco, which has an estimated street value of just over £32,000.

The force said it can "pursue criminal investigations without the need to make arrest".

It added: "Trading Standards will be conducting criminal investigations into a number of people identified through the visits on 27 October."

As Griff plays with a tennis ball, a reward for his hard work, teams are in and out of the hatch, crawling on their hands and knees as they recover the suspected counterfeit cigarettes from the fridge to bag them up.

"We catalogue it and see what there is," says Trading Standards officer Erin Ullyatt.

"Most likely there'll be prosecution afterwards," she tells me.

Dozens of items are thrown through the hatch towards her as her bag quickly fills up.

While torchlight continues to illuminate the dust in the hazy room, the teams smile at each other, and, of course, at Griff.

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