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In this issue:
 In two separate exercises over the last two weeks £5000 worth of illicit cigarettes, tobacco and spirits have been seized by Officers from Coventry Trading Standards.
In the first exercise, items were seized from nine retailers in Coventry and the following week 4 further city shops and a vehicle were searched.
In both exercises hidden stashes were found with the help of specialist tobacco detection dogs provided by Wagtail UK and funded by the Department of Health.
This resulted in Officers finding counterfeit and incorrectly labelled tobacco hidden in the shops.
The haul included 1133 packs of cigarettes and 114 packs of hand rolling tobacco, 40 packs of shisha tobacco and several bottles of vodka. Counterfeit cigarettes can pose an increased fire risk in the home. They do not self-extinguish when they are not being actively smoked.
Investigations are continuing
The raids were carried out as part of our work to reduce the supply of illegal tobacco in the City.
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2 store owners trading as Explosion in Stoney Stanton Road, Coventry appeared at Nuneaton Magistrates Court after illegal cigarettes were found hidden on the off-licence premises. 135 packets of cigarettes were seized by Coventry Trading Standards during raids in February and May 2014.
The 2 owners were both sentenced to a 12 month Community Order, with 300 hours unpaid work and £417 costs and victim surcharge to pay.
Criminals have used the personal details of a local resident and applied online for an Argos store card and then immediately placed an order for an expensive laptop.
Within minutes of a parcel being delivered at the unsuspecting resident’s home a bogus courier called at the house and asked for the item’s return, claiming it had been sent in error.
Later in the week, an Argos Store Card arrived in the post together with an invoice for the laptop.
The resident reported this to Argos who investigated the matter and have accepted that the resident did not order the laptop so won’t be charged for it.
Our advice – if you suddenly receive delivery of goods addressed to you or somebody else in your household that you know has not ordered anything contact the sender immediately.
 Coventry Trading Standards are again warning Apple users to be aware of phishing emails attempting to steal your Apple ID log in details as well as personal and financial details.
The email claims to be from Apple Customer Service and states that you need to ‘complete a short and brief step to securing and validating your account information’ to prevent the suspension of your Apple ID.
This email is not from Apple but is a phishing email designed to panic users into thinking that their service will be suspended.
Always be very wary of emails claiming you need to update or validate account information. If you are concerned about the security of any account, log in from directly from the official site, NEVER from an email.
If you receive what you think is a phishing email claiming to be from Apple you can forward it to them, full details are available on the Apple website.
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For
more information on scams, visit: www.coventry.gov.uk/scams
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