Watch West Mercia Police officers seize £500k in crackdown on barbershops used for money laundering. Video by West Mercia Police.
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00:00Three people south of New Orleans.
00:02On the right, on the right, on the right, on the right, on the right.
00:09Oh, loads of money in the end of the bed.
00:16Police are a warrant, stay still.
00:20We've got a warrant to search the address for nursing goods at 21 million places.
00:25Operation Machinise was a month long crackdown on organised crime gangs using barbershops as fronts for fraud, money laundering and the sale of illicit goods.
00:34Whilst these businesses appeared legitimate, they were actually tools for criminals to hide illegal cash flow.
00:40As part of Operation Machinise, 33 warrants were executed across our three counties, targeting gangs, exploiting barbershops and money laundering.
00:49Together, we seized over 500,000 pounds in illegal funds and arrested for individuals.
00:54West Mercy Police's Economic Crime Unit has been leading the way nationally in tackling financial crime.
01:00Since April 2024, over six million pounds in criminal assets have been seized, disrupting the financial networks that support organised crime.
01:09Community Intelligence played a key role in this operation.
01:12Some of the information used to plan these raids came from the tip-offs from the public.
01:17That local support is invaluable and we encourage anyone with information about businesses involved in money laundering to report it.
01:25You can contact us on 101 or report anonymously to Crime Stoppers at 0800 555 1.
01:32It's a Trouble 1.
01:33We encourage anyone to take it as a number of available places.
01:34We'll get to the details as you do…
01:35You can contact us on the pagina-travel 1.
01:36We'll get to the point where we need to catch up at 433-1.
01:37You can contact us on a small file, which are bound up on the same page, as a perc-trouble-1.