Inside organised crime’s grip on UK high streets

Squalid living conditions for workers concealed under a rotten makeshift staircase. Illegal goods hidden in walls. Reports of underage girls sold booze and sexually abused. Tens of thousands of counterfeit cigarettes, vapes and hand-rolled tobacco tucked in the back of stores.

These were just a few of the discoveries made by Suffolk Police as they stormed into high street businesses used as fronts for organised crime groups (OCGs) in November 2025, targeting a mix of convenience stores, fast food takeaways, sweet shops, barber shops and nail bars. “It is shocking to see this exploitation happening in plain sight,” said the county’s police and crime commissioner Tim Passmore, as news of the early morning raids broke.

But it was only the tip of the iceberg.

Elsewhere across the country, multiple police forces were also streaming into thousands of dodgy high street businesses in their own neighbourhoods, as part of the national co-ordinated crackdown on OCGs dubbed Operation Machinize.

Overall, nearly 1,000 suspects were arrested, £10.7m of criminal cash seized and £2.7m of illicit goods destroyed, amid evidence of drug trafficking, modern slavery and sexual exploitation.

It all pointed unequivocally to a twisted underground economy that now lurks beneath hundreds of UK high streets. From co-ordinated gangs of shoplifters prowling supermarkets, to corner stores selling on their stolen goods, and colourful vape shops used as fronts for massive money laundering operations, OCGs are increasingly prevalent – and, say experts, without a tougher response, legitimate retailers are among those likely to pay the steepest price.

A criminal ecosystem

What Operation Machinize had in its sights wasn’t a few bad apples, but offenders operating as part of co-ordinated networks. According to national intelligence unit Opal, organised crime involves two or more people, with defined roles, operating across two or more police jurisdictions, with repeat offences committed.

“Organised crime is always an ecosystem,” says Emmeline Taylor, professor of criminology at City St George’s, University of London. “You might have an OCG that is stealing in bulk and then shifting those stolen goods into distribution networks in the community.

“Is there a responsibility on landlords to do due diligence to ensure their property isn’t being abused for criminal use?”

Elijah Glantz, Royal United Services Institute

“There might be a business that’s operating as a shop front – if you sat outside, you wouldn’t see a single customer go in all day, and yet somehow they’ve got these incredible profits. They might be selling counterfeit goods or smuggled tobacco. They may be involved in tax evasion, modern slavery offences or not paying their workers a legal wage.”

Though each of these offences may appear isolated, they’re often interconnected layers of the same OCG’s structure. For example, when Operation Zoridon stormed 120 small shops over two days in October 2025, they found shop owners selling goods worth hundreds of thousands of pounds stolen from major retailers. Of the 32 suspects arrested, charges spanned handling stolen goods as well as drug offences and immigration violations.

These OCGs have always been drawn to businesses like corner shops, vape stores, takeaways and confectionery shops.

“Criminals are drawn to retail premises that are cash intensive, are easy to acquire or rent, require little or no licensing, benefit from good footfall, and can operate with a relatively low level of regulatory scrutiny, which describes most high street shops, including convenience stores and vape shops,” explains Lee Ormandy, CTSI lead officer for serious and organised crime.

Crucially, unlike more regulated sectors, most retail premises can be opened with little or no upfront due diligence on the people behind the business. But in recent years, their brazenness has ramped up.

In its damning April report, the CTSI described the increasing prevalence of these networks, many of which have professionalised their operations and extended their “tentacles” into new areas of criminality threatening legitimate businesses, consumer safety and the UK economy. Such is the increase that, in a survey of its members, CTSI said officers suspected up to half of convenience stores and vape shops in some areas of the UK now had links to organised crime.

There are some question marks over that figure. Elijah Glantz, a researcher for the organised crime and policing team at the Royal United Services Institute, suspects that reported figures or estimates could be slightly bloated, by grouping together those businesses genuinely operating as fronts for organised crime with those involved in some minor criminality, such as unregulated workers.

“The amount of money that can get laundered through a candy shop is also a fraction of the percentage that gets laundered through precious gemstones, art and real estate on the daily,” he caveats.

Stephanie Coombes, head of intelligence at Opal, the UK’s national police intelligence unit, which tackles organised retail crime, also recognises that greater awareness and identification may explain some of the reported increases.

“There’s real government focus in terms of neighbourhood policing guarantees, as well as units like ours being set up as a dedicated function to uncover [organised crime],” she says. “There’s also a real investment across the sector from retail partners in technology incident reporting platforms that they’re using to understand the links between crimes in a much more intelligent and sophisticated manner.”

Nevertheless, there is widespread consensus that the problem has become considerably worse in the past 10 years.

Vicious cycle

There isn’t one clear-cut reason for OCGs’ increasing presence. In part, it’s thought that a decline in high streets and town centres is to blame, catalysed by Covid-19, the migration to e-commerce and the thousands of empty units left in its wake, leaving landlords desperate for tenants and – in some cases – willing to look the other way. “Lower rents and lower demand from commercial real estate leaves [high streets] open to landlords having to pretty much take anybody in order to pay the bills,” says Glantz.

It’s a vicious cycle, suggests Taylor, in which organised crime fuels further deterioration in our high streets. “It’s not only that organised crime has moved in as a result. Organised crime is part and parcel of why legitimate businesses are no longer viable. They’re undercut at every point, because these illegal businesses don’t play by the rules.”

Coupled with this is a cost of living crisis that has led some to become more inclined to buy goods at low prices, without asking too many questions. There are also insufficient resources or penalties to pose much of a threat to OCGs’ thriving operations. Over a 10 to 15-year period, there have been cutbacks in Trading Standards of about 50% in some areas, flagged CTSI chief executive John Herriman at a Home Affairs Committee hearing in June.

“That has meant that serious and organised crime has been able to get not just a toehold but a foothold in the high street,” he warned MPs. “That has a pervasive and pernicious impact.”

Weak enforcement measures mean that even where offenders operating illicit shops are caught and handed closure orders, they can reopen in the same or different locations within a few weeks.

“Trading Standards might close a business in Nottingham, only for it to resurface in Leicester,” he says. “With fragmented oversight and limited information sharing across local authorities, repeat offenders can continue operating with relatively little disruption.

“That creates an environment which is highly attractive to organised criminal groups because the likelihood of meaningful, lasting consequences remains relatively low, while the potential rewards are high.”

Legitimate retailers of all sizes have been hit hard as a result. For smaller stores, criminals selling cheap goods down the road and undercutting them further via tax avoidance or exploitation of staff creates an impossibly uneven playing field.

“When we asked retailers in the room at our annual conference in April about their biggest competitors, rogue traders came out as their top concern,” says ACS chief executive Edward Woodall. In fact, in the trade body’s most recent Crime Report, 85% of retailers reported that illicit activity has increased around their business, while one in four have noticed products stolen from their store being sold on in the local area.

“The illicit trade can cause major problems not just in terms of the direct financial impact but also the impact on their reputation as a business,” he adds. “Convenience stores have built a reputation over decades of being a place where communities can come together, where everyone is welcome, and where there are close links with local people through employment and investment.

“It is essential that we don’t mistake the work done by legitimate hard-working retailers with those looking to operate outside of the law.”

For larger retailers systematically targeted by organised shoplifting gangs, the cost sits somewhere around £400m per year, estimates the BRC, alongside the spikes in verbal and physical attacks on staff that accompany a rise in theft.

And for consumers, the associated antisocial behaviour and crime fuelled by an OCG presence can destroy local neighbourhoods. Ahead of a 2022 police crackdown in Cheetham Hill, north of Manchester, once known as the ‘counterfeit capital’ of Europe, locals spoke of the area’s neglect and sustained harassment from ‘spotters’ that lurked outside illegal stores, as well as drugs and exploitation.

“It just rips the heart out of a local community,” says Herriman. So much so that locals are put off venturing into their town centre altogether. One 2025 Ipsos poll found that almost a third (32%) are limited from visiting their local high street or shopping area, either because of crime or antisocial behaviour.

Political ‘hot potato’

Amid sustained pressure from frustrated businesses and the public, organised crime on UK high streets hasn’t escaped political attention. “It’s become a very hot-button political issue that’s fed into a lot of the narratives around lawless Britain,” says Glantz. “High streets have become the primary battleground by which the government is trying to indicate to the public that they’re ‘regaining control’ of spiralling crime.”

In May, a £30m funding packaging was announced by government to target organised crime, with £20m allocated to enhanced law enforcement, including a new multi-agency co-ordination cell based within the National Crime Agency and £6m to bolster local Trading Standards responses. A dedicated High Street Organised Crime Unit will also be created to bring together intelligence from government departments, police and Trading Standards.

In June, the government also said it would introduce secondary legislation to double the length of closure orders to 12 months, making it harder for dodgy stores to operate while investigations are carried out.

This latest spate of announcements followed the creation of Opal’s dedicated Retail Intelligence Unit back in 2024, and a number of targeted police ops, including Machinize (I & II), Zoridon and Vulcan.

“It will take a concentrated, multi-agency approach to tackle what is a nationwide issue”

Lee Ormandy, CTSI lead officer for serious and organised crime

These initiatives have led to plenty of successes. Alongside the headline-grabbing hauls spearheaded by the likes of Machinize, the specialist team at Opal has made 237 arrests in its first two years, with prison time totalling 118 years across 605 offenders, in part thanks to a more strategic approach to charges (see box, p35). But though it’s a good start, the current strategy for tackling organised crime isn’t enough.

“The measures announced by the government… are really positive steps forward, but there is much more to be done,” says Woodall.

For starters, the money is a drop in the ocean compared with what’s needed. “I’ve said this to the head of the Home Office unit herself, that £30m going after this will have a very, very minimal effect,” says Glantz. It might create enough of a deterrent to nudge some criminals away from operating so brazenly, he says. “But then it just adapts, it becomes more difficult to detect.”

“That’s not going to scratch the surface,” agrees Taylor. What will is moving away from a focus purely on law enforcement, she suggests, to the facilitators who allow illicit markets to flourish. “That includes landlords and others who may not be directly involved in criminality, but who know, or at least should know, what is happening on their premises.”

“Is there a responsibility on the landlord to do due diligence to ensure their property isn’t being abused openly for criminal use?” suggests Glantz. “If there was some sort of requirement, how would that change the way that landlords engage? I think that’s certainly a question that the commercial real estate industry won’t want to listen to, but it is certainly something that we’d start to think about.” At-risk businesses, such as vape shops, could even be reclassified under licensing laws to increase scrutiny, he suggests. Rather than a class E use (which doesn’t require due diligence) they could be recategorised as a new subclass that requires additional checks before being handed a permit to trade.

Ormandy is also calling for a more multi-pronged approach, as part of the CTSI’s 10-point plan (see p32), which includes a £100m investment in local authority Trading Standards over four years, permanent closure orders for persistent offenders and even tackling public misconceptions around stolen goods as a ‘victimless crime’. “The government must crack down on various aspects, including closing the shop, targeting individuals in the shop to make it more difficult to move operations, and supporting legitimate landlords to evict tenants whilst cracking down on complicit landlords.”

There also needs to be more intelligence gathered and shared across various stakeholders in order to start to connect the dots between, say, a shoplifting spree in Cambridge, and a surge in stolen goods circulating in Essex.

At Opal, for example, this upstream intelligence is the area where there are the biggest gaps, admits Coombes. “Disposal routes is the largest gap and our greatest focus at the moment is understanding what those upstream operations look like. Are we seeing disposal within the local community? Are we seeing disposal internationally? Are we seeing disposal mostly on online markets? What does that look like in terms of how these groups recruit people? How does that happen? How do we understand not just the group that we’re looking at, but that wider network and whether that network is national or international?”

For Ormandy, the bottom line is that “it will take a concentrated, multi-agency approach to effectively tackle what is a nationwide issue, but it must be prioritised if we want our high streets to be vibrant, safe spaces”.

Without it, organised criminals could tighten their grip, while legitimate retailers shoulder the cost.