A shopworker has been sentenced for selling dodgy fags from a Lincoln shop – with trading standards saying he was guilty of a similar offence back in 2015.
Lincolnshire Trading Standards said Amir Ahmadi was caught selling illegal cigarettes from Super Sam Mini Market in Lincoln High Street, on several occasions in 2020.
Ahmadi, who is aged 44 and lives in Maxwell Way, Sheffield, was given a two year suspended sentence for the offences at Lincoln Crown Court last month.
Lincolnshire Trading Standards said it raided the shop in February 2020, and said Ahmadi promised under caution that he would stop selling illegal cigarettes at the Super Sam store.
However, it said Ahmadi was still selling the illicit cigarettes when officers returned less than two months later.
On two further visits that year, trading standards said they, alongside Lincolnshire Police, seized more than 2,300 illegal cigarettes from the shop. When trading standards told the landlord what was happening the tenants were evicted.
After pleading guilty to the offences at Lincoln Crown Court, Ahmadi was sentenced to two years custody, suspended for two years. He also got a 12 month community order with a 35 days rehabilitation activity requirement and was told to do 80 hours of unpaid work.
Andy Wright, principal Lincolnshire Trading Standards officer, said: “The business Ahmadi was working in had no legitimate purpose, and was set up simply to sell illegal tobacco products.
“After our first raid, Amir Ahmadi was given a chance to leave the store, and not return to selling illegal cigarettes.
“And it later emerged he has been convicted of this activity before, back in 2015, so he was well aware that what he was doing was wrong. Instead he chose to go back to the store and continue pedalling these dangerous and illegal goods.
“The judge felt suspending Ahmadi’s sentence for the maximum two years would provide him with one final opportunity to change his ways.
“If he’s brought before the court at any point over the next 24 months he’ll be hauled straight to prison.
“Illegal cigarettes really aren’t worth the risks – if they’re counterfeit, you have no idea what might be inside them, they present a much greater fire risk because they often can’t self-extinguish, and buying them funds organised criminal gangs and brings anti-social behaviour to your neighbourhood.”
The court also ordered the forfeiture of the illegal cigarettes seized from Amir Ahmadi to Lincolnshire Trading Standards so that they could be destroyed.
