Moment police raiding Oxford Street candy store find secret underground tunnel where staff fled after tourist charged £899 for TWO pack of sweets
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This is the moment police raid an Oxford Street candy store and find a secret section leading to an underground tunnel where two staff fled after police were alerted to a tourist who was charged £899 for two bags of sweets.
Westminster Council and the Metropolitan Police organised a raid on the US style sweet shop after an unhappy tourist complained after being charged nearly a grand for two packets of sweets.
The disgruntled customer later secured a refund for the £899 when they returned with officers to the shop on 399A Oxford street on the weekend of April 12-13.
But when cops returned on April 25 to raid the shop, they shockingly discovered a hidden part of the store, tucked away behind a camouflaged wall adorned with bags in the basement.
Bodycam footage shows a covert part of the store rammed with thousands of alleged thousands of alleged counterfeit items, totalling to a 'street value' of around £80,000.
Whilst extensively patrolling the scene, the officer discovered a secret tunnel from which two shop assistants fled, avoiding capture, according to the Evening Standard.
The raid is understood to be the largest impounded haul of suspected fake and unsafe goods on Oxford Street so far.
The thousands of items included American food, cigarettes, single use vapes, nicotine pouches, heated tobacco and travel adaptors as well as power banks.
The cigarettes were not in the legally required plain packaging and were missing the graphic 'deterrent' images which appear on tobacco.
The pirated products seized included well-known brands such as Marlboro and Benson & Hedges.
Top Gun cigarettes were also seized which is a Chinese 'copy' brand increasingly showing up in the UK.
Elsewhere, the single use vapes included products which claimed to be 'zero nicotine' but then had nicotine displayed on their list of ingredients.
Other vapes claimed 'puff' counts as high as 20,000 with tank sizes four to five times the legal 2ml limit.
Councillor Adam Hug, leader of Westminster City Council, said: 'We have known for a long time that US candy stores rip off customers, but charging £900 for two packets of sweets is a new low, even for the unscrupulous people who run these rackets
'Our job is to protect people who visit the West End from being exploited and continuing raids and court appearances will ensure life is sour for the rogue US sweet shop trade.
'Hopefully, the fall in the number of US candy and souvenir shops means the tide is going out on this tatty trade.'
It comes as the number of mixed candy and souvenir stores on Oxford Street has declined from 40 to 18 since the pandemic, as of March 2025.
MailOnline understands the raid took place at two stores at 399A and 399B on the busy London street.
Trading standards officers have seized more than £1 million in fake and unsafe goods over the past two years.
Westminster City Council has led a series of successful court actions against candy and souvenir stores to recover unpaid business rates.
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