Why Your High Street is Full of Phone and Vape Shops

Added: 2026-05-20

[00:00:00]Does your high street look like this?

[00:00:01]Most do nowadays. All the ones around me do. This is Sigup in Southeast London.

[00:00:06]These photos were taken a couple of years ago, but nothing's changed. See if you can spot a pattern. We've got Smart Tech here, the smartphone and devices repair specialist. And then, well, less than one door up. There's I repair zone.

[00:00:21]It's lit up like Las Vegas every day, but there's no customers inside.

[00:00:25]Brilliant bright white lights, refurbished phones and laptops, as well as the ring lights in the window.

[00:00:31]Everything you need to become an influencer or uh make your Tik Toks. But weirdly, nobody's ever going in there.

[00:00:38]It's just one bored man from the Indian subcontinent sat behind the desk on his phone all day. And I suppose it's because there must not be much foot traffic because right up the road they've got Ver Tech London. Mobile phones, vapes, laptops, iPads. And then right outside the bus stop, they've also got DGN Tech, a mobile phone vape expert. Perhaps their expertise is what's eating up all the business from the other shops. But if there's no customers in the other shops, why why are they able to stay open with the cost of business rates, with the fact that foot traffic in high streets are down ever since CO? I know there's multiple shops that are shut in Sickup High Street now that the Poundland's gone.

[00:01:16]Bunch of the banks have closed down, Halifax and HSBC. Oh, and by the way, just in case if you didn't think there were enough vape shops, there's another one right around the corner. This is exactly the same in New Elton, by the way. There's two of these phone vape shops open there. Very small high street. Exact same in Elton. There's a dodgy luggage shop there. I think there's two as well. It's the same in Beexley and the same in Brmley. Uh I took this a couple of years ago now. But there's a gadget and vape shop. And then there's another mobile phone shop again two doors down. And then there's uh vape and candy shop. You can see plenty of those. And then also a a mobile phone shop next to it. and a phone baron phone repair shop as well. So why are high streets replete with these neon phone and vape shops ubiquitably staffed by men from the Indian subcontinent or the Middle East? Well, the BBC's done an investigation and it turns out that they've been funding the small boat crossings. So they're moneyaundering fronts, many of them for people smuggling gangs. doesn't mean all of them, but a suspicious amount of them will be if the National Crime Agency and Trading Standards decide to crack down on them. And so you have to ask why? Why are they getting permission from the council to open these shops? Why have they not been raided yet? Alongside the scourge of cashonly Turkish barbers across the country, which are doing less haircuts and more drug deals and have about 10 Kurdish men living above the shop and anytime the BBC goes and investigates them, they just say, "Oh, I'm asseeker, bro." And then they get off from not being arrested because we have to let them stay in the country for some reason. Well, this investigation published today on the 18th of May 2026 is in Woolitch. So, right up the road yet again from Elton Beexley and Sikup.

[00:03:03]And this is a front for people smuggling despite them denying it. They were they were caught on an undercover camera. So, it seems they're banged to rights. Why haven't they been arrested? Why haven't they been deported? Nobody knows. But the BBC secretly filmed staff at a shop in Southeast London, Woolage, telling an undercover researcher that nearly £3,000 in cash could be deposited with them and sent to a smuggler in France. "You put your money here. If your friends reach the UK, you shouldn't come back, we were told at the mobile phone store in Wulitch." A three-month investigation gives insight into how smugglers appear to be using UK company's bank accounts to facilitate small boat crossings.

[00:03:39]Something a leading expert in criminal finance told us he had not seen before.

[00:03:43]Well, that expert must not have been reading the Telegraph for the last year because they discovered the hala finance trade has been funding the international smuggling trade for quite some time.

[00:03:53]There are money exchanges in Pakistan, Turkey, Kabul and Afghanistan that receive direct wire transfers from money exchange hubs, cashonly businesses like Turkish barbers, all these dodgy phone shops and then the money never actually touches the hands of the migrants. it can never get lost in the system based on word of mouth based on the honorbased system of trust among the um the the global Muslim clan. So what happens is there is a sponsor at the UK end of the transfer and they pay like a chap like this who works in the dodgy phone shop and then the phone shop transfer money to the other end the people smuggler who is in contact with the person that's looking to be smuggled and they're just using WhatsApp or whatever texting their relatives back home or sponsoring them. And then once the people smuggler is paid, they set the the illegal migrant on their merry way crossing from Belgium or or France, the the Cala jungle migrant camp, and then they they get into Britain. And so money has never technically changed hands between the the people smuggler and the smuggly, the illegal migrant, or the illegal migrant and their own family, or the illegal migrant and the sponsor point. It's only between the business in question facilitating the trade and the people smuggler actually bringing the person in. And this is all done on word of mouth and and the bonds of trust between believers in Islam. And this has been known about for some time.

[00:05:24]But for some reason, neither the BBC nor the the supposed experts that are meant to be cracking down on this sort of stuff know it. But but the Telegraph know it. And me, a guy just chatting about politics into his camera in his study, knows about it. Lots of you, I'm sure, will have suspected this. And apparently the entire National Crime Agency and all of the the state broadcasters criminal experts have no clue this is going on.

[00:05:52]Either they are so woefully incompetent they deserve to be out of a job or they are willfully turning a blind eye so that this continues. In this specific case, as well as the phone shop, the smuggler in France provided the bank account details of two UK registered companies which he said could both take electronic transfers for migrant crossings. One is a wholesale business in Newcastle Pontine. The other is a car wash in Cambridge here. So you know all those dodgy migrant car washes. I think there is one actually at Bexy Heath. I think there's also one run out of the sainsburries in Elum if I remember correctly. That's been for years. They need investigating. Yeah. If you've been suspicious about the men they're employing and about whether or not they're actually legitimate business considering all the all the watermarks that that come off of your car anytime you use it, they're probably not.

[00:06:34]They're probably facilitating international people smuggling. They're probably responsible for the small boat crossings over the channel. The smuggler, who calls himself Ahmad, also provided details of several businesses in Europe where payments could be made in cash, including a car wash in Antworp and a restaurant in Paris. He also shared bank details of several individuals in the UK and mainland Europe who he said could receive payments. So there is an embedded international trafficking network, money laundering through illicit businesses in our country across Europe funneling men from the Middle East, Pakistan, India into our country. And the authorities and the press know about it and they know it's specifically connected with ethnic networks and a system of Islamic finance and morality.

[00:07:21]And yet they do nothing. These men just keep coming in. The best we get is some reporting about it that confirms your suspicions that your high street is replete with dodgy phone and vape shops that are actually moneyaundering France for international criminal smuggling gangs. The BBC sent an undercover researcher posing as a migrant trying to cross the channel illegally with his child into a migrant camp in Dunkirk and this is the the Calala jungle. Within minutes of arriving, men approached and appeared to be touting for rival gangs.

[00:07:50]We ended up making contact with two separate smugglers. One toot took the researcher to meet a smuggler who called himself Zia and said he could book a place on a small boat crossing, a journey referred to as the game by smugglers. Money exchange shops in the UK could take payment for the crossing and said Zia although he did not specify which ones. We know there are ones operating in Birmingham because the Telegraph sent undercover cameras in there and and they gave them money and they they promised to facilitate a transfer from Afghanistan. So, so we know this is happening all across the country. In London, they don't give you a receipt. They call me to say they've got the money. When you cross, they transfer to me. So, he's laying out the hala based finance system that is facilitating this entire trade. And the BBC are like, "Can't possibly understand how this works. Nobody could have seen this coming." The second toot we met gave us the phone number of the smuggler, Ahmad, who had been operating out of northern France for more than 5 years. On the phone, Ahmad, who spoke Farsy and said he was from Afghanistan, told the undercover researcher they could pay via one of three UK businesses, including at a shop called AFG Mobile Repair in Woolage.

[00:08:59]So, these people are right down the road from me. Bear in mind, my burough and the neighboring burough are the burs that people go to. They pay premiums to live in to escape the fractured demographics of London. And now it is expanding outward thanks to the policies of this Labor government and the previous Conservative government that thought they need to resettle refugees.

[00:09:22]I'm doing scare quotes for audio listeners from Afghanistan here who want to import their entire clans including actual ISIS fighters and predators on our women and girls because they are enticed to take part in the services by Tik Toks and Instagram posts that film girls on nights out dressed immodestly by Muslim standards undercover and essentially imply if you come to Britain it's like a sexed tourist paradise.

[00:09:48]White women are just willing and waiting for you. Uh spoiler alert they're not.

[00:09:51]That is why they all hang around outside clubs for after hours to prey on vulnerable women that get separated from their friendship groups and commit sex offenses against them. Hey presto, Afghanistan is per capita the largest perpetrator of sex offenses of any nation in our country for the last couple of years. I wonder how that happened. It's shops like this. It's the international smuggling trade and it's the cowardly politicians that thought that their virtue signal would be costfree.

[00:10:19]The crossing, according to the the BBC, would cost £2,700 for two people. Back in the UK, they then visited the Southeast London phone shop on three occasions, secretly filming conversations with two shop workers.

[00:10:30]This time, an undercover researcher posed as a UK-based family member of a migrant attempting to cross the channel.

[00:10:36]What you have to understand is as well, the moment you allow any of these people here legally, they are like a beach head for the for the illegal migrants crossing in because they will harbor them in their communities. They will put them up in their houses of multiple occupancy or their spare room. They will pull their resources together to use whatever illicit means possible to import their friends and family here.

[00:10:56]They would establish businesses by pulling those resources together and either apply for the liberally admitted skilled worker visas for phone technicians that were basically work minimum wage or they'll use the the businesses themselves as nodes in the international smuggling nexus. We just shouldn't have any of these people here, that they're a constant liability, legal or illegal. One man explained from behind the counter that the money would be transferred to the smugglers only after a successful crossing. If your people do not cross, if he tells me to return your money back to you, I'll do it. Although he acknowledged that a safe crossing could not be guaranteed. You can't count on boats. You never know.

[00:11:34]God forbid the boat sinks and all of them drown.

[00:11:37]My uh my country speech laws prohibit me from saying anything further. The BBC promises they didn't hand over any cash from the license fee payers. When they returned later to confront the man, he denied moving money for people smugglers. "We don't move money. We only have phone shop," he said, despite being caught on camera. "Has he been arrested?" "Nothing from here in the BBC about being arrested for admitting to being part of an international people smuggling trade. The mobile phone shop and the two other UK firms we investigated are all listed on company's house, the government's official registry of businesses. We verified that Arhmad had given us correct bank details for both the Newcastle and Cambridge firms. Our findings suggest smugglers are untroubled by the efforts the government has made to try and smash the gangs. The government has made it a priority to break the business model of people smuggling gangs. Well, you're still allowing their businesses to operate in the UK.

[00:12:31]For some reason, every legitimate business can't afford the business rates. They they can't afford all of the various taxes that you keep imposing on them, squeezing GDP out of the productive, honest people of Britain like an an increasingly dry rag. But all of these illicit businesses run by foreigners who arrived here within the last few years, capitalizing on the desolation of our high streets by COVID lockdowns, they for some reason aren't affected by either these crackdowns or the taxes.

[00:13:00]If we were willing to discriminate, you know, the oldfashioned sensible word, we've just sent the National Crime Agency and trading standards into every last one. I mean, you can just look at them. It's a bit like when Belle locked up all those criminals cuz they had the skull tattoos for MS-13. If you just look at these these horrible signs, I think we know that largely English people aren't running these. So, just we can eyeball it and deport pretty much everyone that's running these and and we can just save ourselves the headache for some reason.

[00:13:30]government, local and national aren't willing to do that. So, we just have to we just have to elect people that that are willing to investigate this to get rid of these people and to ensure that taxes are slashed and business rates are abolished so that Britain can become a nation of shopkeepers again. Like I want my high street full of businesses that I would actually go to that make it look and feel like an English town, like a welcoming place. So, you know, my wife and kids can can walk around it and feel safe rather than being eyeballed by all these predatory men that are just importing their co-ethnics via an international people smuggling trade because a couple of people are dumb enough to drop their phone, smash the screen, and and and keep their shop open. When confronted on the phone by the BBC's undercover researcher, Ahmad denied any involvement in people smuggling. Zia did not respond to repeated requests to comment. The owner of the Newcastle wholesale business said, "They strongly reject any suggestion that we have knowingly or negligently enabled criminal activity and promised to cooperate fully with the authorities. The Cambridge car wash did not respond to our request for comment.

[00:14:31]They shouldn't be able to. They should already be in leg irons on the first Ryan Air flight back to wherever Gujarat hole they spawned from.

[00:14:40]It's so frustrating. And then migration minister Mike Tab, who is the the ultimate cheerleader for whatever the government does, says, "There's a lot of investigative work that goes on behind the scenes." Okay. But I'm still seeing these in my high streets. So short of a battering ram through the shutters, I'm not satisfied by anything. asked about smuggler Ahmad's use of UK registered companies bank accounts, Tap said he would love to see more of the results of our investigation, but could not go into any detail on that. Criminal gangs are agile and continuously changing their methods, he says, and it's important we keep up with that and we're continuously pressing for it. I know a good solution, Mr. Tap. Don't have any of them here.

[00:15:21]We could save ourselves so many problems by just not importing the world's criminals and not allowing an international ethnic and religious nepotism network to flood our country full of foreign criminals. That would be a very smart idea, but that would require you engaging in mass deportations and your demented liberal ideology that refuses to see any differences between peoples on the grounds of heritage and nationality and culture and religion and behavior prohibits that. So, I'm going to vote for the guy that does. But I suppose this answers the question as to why our high streets are horrible now because it's likely full of foreign fronts for the international people smuggling trade that is facilitating the small boat crossings over the channel. So, if you think that you aren't affected by mass migration because you know you you don't live in a place where they've got a migrant hotel, fortunately my area doesn't have one yet.

[00:16:17]Don't worry. All the businesses that are operating in your high streets and they're in Bath, they're in Oxford, you know, these these up market places where where diversity hasn't ruined it yet.

[00:16:27]Don't worry. Those businesses are making sure that all these men are coming to a town near you.