MANCHESTER: Two women from Greater Manchester caught smuggling 200 kilos of illicit hand-rolling tobacco in a car boot, so it could be sold on the black market, have been sentenced for evading £34,548 in excise duty.
Jessica Beddoe, 25, and Victoria Brown, 34, hid the tobacco under a blanket in the boot of a Citroen Picasso being driven by Brown. The women were arrested by Border Force officers at Poole’s continental ferry port on September 1 as they got off a ferry from Cherbourg, France.
Officers from HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) began to investigate and believe that the tobacco was destined for sale on the black market in the Greater Manchester area.
Beddoe and Brown were naïve to think they could get away with smuggling tobacco into the UK. This type of crime costs our economy around £2 billion a year and undermines honest retailers who have to compete with such illegal trade.
They both received suspended sentences today after pleading guilty to defrauding excise duty on the smuggled tobacco.
