Customs officers have seized a massive one million cigarettes - bound for Bradford's housing estates - from smugglers at Leeds-Bradford airport.

Officers have warned that cigarette bootlegging has reached "epidemic proportions".

A spokesman said: "We have reason to believe the cigarettes are being sold on Bradford housing estates."

"In some cases we have heard of extortion, with shopkeepers being told: 'sell them for us or else'."

The one million seizure has come in the first three months of this year and compares with 200,000 for the same period last year. The customs spokesman blamed the rise in smuggling on the extra 20p per pack of 20 slapped on cigarettes in the budget.

Bradford North MP Terry Rooney - who believes large quantities of drugs are also being smuggled through the airport - has urged Home Secretary Jack Straw to post more customs officers at the airport.

Mr Rooney said: "I have no doubt there are organised distribution points for goods smuggled in." He believed some hard up people did it "to make a few bob".

"In the past there were known people bringing in drugs. But I think people are being sent on dummy runs bringing tobacco. If they get away with it, they bring in drugs."

Customs officers have revealed:

Smugglers are taking cheap flights out to the Canary Isles where packs of 200 cigarettes cost £7.

They return with suitcases full

of cigarettes and risk a prison sentence to avoid paying £26 duty and VAT per 200 cigarettes.

A passenger once flew out with no baggage and returned a week later with 20 suitcases full of cigarettes.

Smugglers can make massive profits by selling them in Bradford for up to about £26 for each box of 200.

The record number of cigarettes to be seized from one person at Leeds-Bradford is 59,000.

Smugglers can be prosecuted by Customs and Excise for buying and selling as well as importing cigarettes where duty has not been paid.

They face six months in prison and a fine totalling more than three times the value of goods seized.

A number of people are expected to appear before Pudsey magistrates in May for allaged evasion of Excise Duty since January.

Senior anti-smuggling officer Yvonne Trimble said 500,000 cigarettes had been seized in one week- long operation at the airport.

A group of people from just one flight had been caught with 350,000 cigarettes in one flight. A total of £65,000 duty would have been lost in the week.

And today chairman of the Council's housing services sub committee Councillor Jim O'Neill warned: "Any tenant found selling them would face an investigation by the Council and the consequences could be serious."

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