News imageFile on 4 Investigates, Dangerous habit: The criminal networks flooding the UK with fake cigarettes

File on 4 Investigates

Dangerous habit: The criminal networks flooding the UK with fake cigarettes

13 October 2026

Available for over a year

File on 4 Investigates reveals the global criminal networks flooding the UK with fake cigarettes. We trace the supply chain smuggling the counterfeits across borders and lay bare the human cost as vulnerable people are moved across continents and made to work and live in clandestine factories here in the UK.

We reveal how a secret factory capable of making up to a quarter of a billion cigarettes a year was recently uncovered in the UK and join Belgian customs as they raid a factory making cigarettes bound for the British market. A former senior official in Europol tells us criminal gangs are now making as much money from fake cigarettes as drugs.

Presenter: Jane Deith

Producer: Paul Grant

Production Management: Tim Fernley & Tom Dunster

Technical Producer: Richard Hannaford

Editor: Tara McDermott