Court tells Yorkshire’s illegal tobacco masterminds to pay back £412,000

The masterminds, who were behind the UK’s largest illegal tobacco factory, have been told to pay back £412,000 or face a longer stretch behind bars, stated recent reports on Wednesday (5).

John Watson Snr, 49, and Mindaugus Aleksandravicius, 49, led a 12-man gang that flooded northern England with fake cigarettes worth £10million. The two were found guilty of excise fraud and jailed at Sheffield Crown Court last year after being busted by HM Revenue and Customs (HMRC) in 2015.

According to court proceedings that happened on Tuesday (4) and Wednesday (5), Watson Snr has been told to pay back £412,000 or face a longer stretch inside while Aleksandravicius was ordered to repay £2,760 within three months.

HMRC carried out coordinated raids at properties linked to the gang in County Durham and South Yorkshire in November 2015 when officers discovered the largest tobacco factory ever encountered by HMRC inside a farm unit in Crook, County Durham.

The factory had more than 24 tonnes of tobacco inside, along with 500,000 cigarettes, old tobacco machinery and products used to make the cigarettes. It was reported by the officials at the time that the factory – which could produce 140 packets of cigarettes a minute – was the largest they had “ever come across”.

The cigarettes produced at the factory were moved to a nearby garden centre, before being distributed to locations in the North East and South Yorkshire, reports said.

Watson Snr admitted that he earned less than £15,000 a year at the time, but investigators reported to have discovered he had splashed out more than £180,000 on luxury cars and a holiday.

“Watson and his associates ran highly sophisticated illegal operation, which put millions of counterfeit cigarettes on the streets of the UK and deprived our vital public services of millions of pounds,” reported quoted Gillian Hilton, assistant director at the HMRC’s fraud investigation service, as saying.

“Now Watson must pay back his ill-gotten gains or spend more time behind bars and still owe the money.

“Our work doesn’t stop when someone is convicted – HMRC always looks to recover proceeds from crime from criminals who try to cheat the system.”