This is the moment police raided a string of Turkish barber shops and seized more than £500,000 in illegal cash during a crackdown on money laundering.
Bodycam footage shows officers smashing their way into the businesses, which are increasingly used as fronts by criminal gangs.
They seized more than £500,000 in dirty cash and arrested seven people after swooping on 33 premises last month.
The raids were carried out by West Mercia Police, together with Trading Standards West Midlands Fire and Rescue, Immigration Enforcement and HMRC.
They formed part of Operation Machinize – a crackdown on gangs using barber shops for fraud, money laundering and selling illicit goods.
More than over £6 million in criminal assets have been seized in the year it has been underway.
It coincides with a broader crackdown by the National Crime Agency, which has overseen dozens of raids in recent months.
More than 750 barbers opened in the UK last year despite a broader High Street downturn – raising suspicions that some are being used by gangs.
A West Mercia Police officer speaks to a man inside one of the raided Turkish barbers
Sniffer dogs were brought along on the raids on the shops, which were allegedly being used as fronts for criminal activity
Detective Inspector Dan Fenn, of West Mercia Police’s Economic Crime team, said: ‘Organised crime groups are opportunistic and exploit legitimate businesses, such as barbershops, to hide their illegal cash flow.
‘The high cash turnover of these businesses makes them ideal for disguising illicit activities.
‘Our work during Operation Machinize sends a clear message to these crime networks: we will not tolerate criminal activity in our communities.
‘Following these warrants, 34 intelligence reports have been submitted, helping to build a stronger intelligence picture and supporting future operations.
‘Community intelligence played a key role in this operation. Some of the information used to plan these raids came from public tip-offs.
‘That local support is invaluable, and we encourage anyone with information about businesses involved in money laundering to report it.’
Drugs expert Gary Carroll, who spent more than 10 years in law enforcement and now gives court testimony on street drug gangs, recently revealed there was a ‘copycat’ aspect to the exploitation of the Turkish barber format by criminals.
‘It’s a well trodden path that one crime group will just copy another when they see something is working,’ he told MailOnline.
Bodycam footage shows officers smashing their way into the barber shops
An officer in a police car drives down a high street in the West Midlands before entering a shop
They seized more than £500,000 in dirty cash, along with £16,000 and arrested seven people after swooping on 33 premises last month. Pictured is an officer inspecting a document
Boss Crew Barbers in West London, whose owner was sentenced to 12 years last year for sending £11,000 to ISIS supporters in Syria
‘And while we are increasingly moving away from cash as a society, barbers are still predominantly cash based – something they can get away with because the fees they charge are relatively low.
‘Then there’s the added attraction of this being an unregulated market that isn’t monitored by any government body. So there’s a lack of enforcement, without the one-off hygiene checks you’d get with food businesses.’
Shops marketing themselves as ‘Turkish’ barbers are often run by other nationalities, including Kurds and Albanians.
Even so, Mr Carroll drew a link between the rise of Turkish barber shops and the continuing popularity of heroin trafficked by gangs from the country and elsewhere in Asia.
‘When we look at money laundering there’s the well established affiliation with Turkish heroin, and the demand for that is certainly not decreasing in the UK,’ he said.
Traditional Turkish-style barbers are known for stylish haircuts – usually completed with a hot towel and cut-throat razor.
But there have long been concerns about criminals infiltrating the trade.
In the UK barbers do not have to register as a business with Companies House, with the option to instead operate as a sole trader.
Barber Hewa Rahimpur, 30, was the lynchpin of a vast cross-Channel people smuggling operation
He is seen here being arrested by NCA officers in East London. He was later extradited to Belgium to face trial
Some shops also let individual chairs to hairdressers.
The arrest of people smuggler Hewa Rahimpur in 2022 was one of the early signs of the dark reality behind the barber shop boom.
Rahimpur and his gang of fellow Iranian Kurds were detained on suspicion of bringing 10,000 migrants into Dover from the French coast on small boats.
The 30-year-old, who had arrived in the UK illegally and was granted asylum after claiming to have suffered ‘political oppression’ in his home country, was driving a top-of-the-range Mercedes when he was caught by police.
His gang had netted £13million in cash from the crossings and it needed to be laundered somehow, so Rahimpur, a former barber, entered the hairstyling business a few years ago in Camden, North London.
He was extradited from the UK to stand trial in Belgium last year and is now serving an 11-year sentence for people-trafficking.
In a second high-profile trial, 33-year-old Afghani Gul Wali Jabarkhel was accused of using his barber shop in Colindale, North London, as a base for a smuggling racket in which he tried to recruit lorry drivers to bring migrants to the UK hidden in their cargo.
After realising police were watching him, in 2020 Jabarkhel fled to Kabul, Afghanistan.
The legitimate face of the trade: Reza Jafari, owns a legitimate Turkish barber shop in Kent and has become fed up with allegations of crime
Pictured is the street in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, where Mr Jafari’s shop is located
Jabarkhel was convicted alongside three others after a trial two years ago at Kingston Crown Court for his role in what the NCA described as a ‘ruthless operation when human beings were little more than goods to profit from’.
Some salons have also been linked to terrorism, with Tarek Namouz, proprietor of West London hairdresser Boss Crew Barbers, sentenced to 12 years last year for sending £11,000 to Syria to ‘purchase weapons and explosives’ to use against President Assad’s government forces.
The barber, who lived above his salon in Hammersmith, boasted to a prison visitor while on remand awaiting trial that he had actually managed to send £25,000 to the ISIS supporters that he was financing.
However, growing allegations of criminality relating to barber shops has prompted a backlash among legitimate traders.
Last year, Reeza Jafari told MailOnline that he has had enough of those who harbour suspicions about shops like his.
The 31-year-old, who runs Pasha in Tunbridge Wells, said: ‘People assume that if you own a Turkish barbers then you must have something to hide, that you have these links to organised crime.
‘But in most cases, it’s not true. We just want to make money and have a livelihood like anyone else.
‘But the small number of bad ones are harming the good ones. Those that exist just to launder cash for criminals reflect badly on us all because we get viewed the same way.’