A 73-YEAR-old man and his wife turned their Coleford home into an illegal shop selling ’enormous’ amounts of contraband tobacco and cigarettes to local smokers, Gloucester Crown Court heard on Tuesday (September 27).

The court heard that Harold Bennett ran the illicit cottage industry with wife Susan, 54.

But the lucrative trade was stubbed out when customs officers who kept watch on the couple’s house in Mushet Place, in May and June last year saw an ’unusual number of people coming and going,’ the court was told.

Prosecutor Jonathan Fuller said officers raided the house on July 24 and found 111.4 kilos of illicit hand rolling tobacco and 757 packs of 20 cigarettes and £72,245 in cash.

"This was the largest seizure of this type that the department had come across," Mr Fuller said.

The judge, Recorder Ben Browne QC, sentenced Bennett to nine months jail, suspended for two years.

Factory worker Mrs Bennett was sentenced to four months suspended for two years and ordered to do 60 hours of unpaid work.

To Mr Bennett, the Recorder said: "As prime mover of this operation you richly deserve an immediate sentence. But you are 73, you suffer from ill health, you are of good character and one asks oneself whether, other than sending a clear message to the public, what purpose there would be in sending you to prison.”

In sentencing them, the judge said one of the aggravating features of the case was that because the tobacco and cigarettes were fake, there was not knowing what extra danger they posed to smokers.