Police have conducted raids against hundreds of barber shops suspected of being fronts for money laundering, human trafficking, and other criminal activity.
On Friday, the NCA announced that it had conducted raids on 265 barber shops and other cash-intensive businesses, arresting and questioning dozens of people, closing premises, and seizing cash and assets.
The NCA said businesses such as barber shops, vape shops, American-themed sweet shops, car washes, and nail bars are often used by criminal gangs to conceal the origins of their illicitly-gained profits.
The agency says criminal networks will use these high street businesses to mix their cash into the financial system, in a bid to hinder criminal investigations.
£1 Million in Banks Frozen
Operation Machinize was a three-week crackdown on high street crime involving 19 police forces, regional organised crime units, and other agencies including Home Office Immigration Enforcement, HMRC, and Trading Standards.In total, 35 people were arrested and 55 were questioned about their immigration status. A further 97 people were safeguarded in relation to potential modern slavery.
Officers had also secured orders to freeze the assets of bank accounts with combined funds worth more than £1 million. In addition, they seized £400,000 in cash, 200,000 cigarettes, 700 packs of tobacco, 800 illegal vapes, and two vehicles.
Investigators also found two cannabis farms containing a combined 150 plants.
Tireless Work of Officers
Rachael Herbert, deputy director of the National Economic Crime Centre at the NCA, said that during Operation Machinize, investigators saw “links to drug trafficking and distribution, organised immigration crime, modern slavery and human trafficking, firearms, and the sale of illicit tobacco and vapes.”“We know cash-intensive businesses are used as fronts for money laundering, facilitating some of the highest harm and highest impact offending in the UK,” she said.
Herbert added that the results of the operation were “testament to the tireless work of officers across the country, and demonstrate our resolve to clamp down on organised criminality abusing the high street.”
The details of the raid come after Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer announced plans to boost the number of officers on patrol by 13,000 in the next four years in an effort to rebuild trust in community policing and tackle high street crime.
Announcing the plans during a visit to Cambridgeshire Police Headquarters in Huntingdon on Thursday, Starmer confirmed that the first 3,000 new neighbourhood officers will be deployed by the start of 2026, “all of them visible on the beat and serving their communities—not stuck behind a desk.”
Undermining Borders and Security
Security minister Dan Jarvis said that the NCA-led operation highlighted the scale and complexity of this type of crime, and demonstrates the government’s commitment to making the UK’s streets safer, “a key pillar of this government’s Plan for Change.”Jarvis said, “High street crime undermines our security, our borders, and the confidence of our communities, and I am determined to take the decisive action necessary to bring those responsible to justice.”
“We will continue to support the NCA, and other law enforcement partners, as we make the UK an even more hostile environment for organised crime,” he added.
Commenting on the NCA raids, Reform UK MP Lee Anderson told The Epoch Times: “Reform UK called this months ago. The thousands of foreign-owned barber shops popping up across UK high streets rarely cut hair—but often serve as fronts for money laundering, human trafficking, and organised crime.
“The NCA has finally exposed what we’ve known all along—from vape shops to nail salons and barber shops, these fronts for criminal activity have been operating in plain sight across the country.”
