Turkish Barbers Raided in £500K Crime Cash Laundering Blitz

By Ben Freeman

In a coordinated series of raids across in London, the Midlands and beyond, dozens of so-called Turkish barbers were stormed by police as part of an ongoing investigation into their use as fronts for large-scale money laundering and organised criminality.

These premises, while styled as traditional grooming establishments, were allegedly being exploited by networks operating across the UK and beyond—serving less as barbershops and more as laundromats for the proceeds of serious, often transnational crime.

Footage captured by enforcement teams during last month’s operation shows police battering down shopfront doors, seizing significant amounts of illicit cash, and arresting individuals suspected of laundering money for major organised crime groups. In total, more than £500,000 in cash was recovered, with seven arrests made across 33 separate locations.

Officers were acting under the umbrella of Operation Machinize, a joint enforcement campaign spearheaded by West Mercia Police and supported by Trading Standards, West Midlands Fire and Rescue Service, Immigration Enforcement and HM Revenue & Customs.

"Organised crime groups are opportunistic and exploit legitimate businesses, such as barbershops, to hide their illegal cash flow," stated Detective Inspector Dan Fenn of the West Mercia Economic Crime Unit. "The high cash turnover of these businesses makes them ideal for disguising illicit activities."

The barbershop model, particularly those marketing themselves as Turkish in origin, has seen an unexplained and statistically anomalous boom across the UK in recent years. Over 750 such businesses opened their doors in the last calendar year alone—this despite an overall downturn in retail and high street footfall. Authorities suggest this rapid proliferation has created a fertile landscape for exploitation by criminal actors.

Some 34 intelligence reports have now been compiled on the back of the recent warrants, according to DI Fenn. "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."

Authorities were also quick to emphasise the role of community intelligence in building their case. "Some of the information used to plan these raids came from public tip-offs," added DI Fenn. "That local support is invaluable, and we encourage anyone with information about businesses involved in money laundering to report it."

Gary Carroll, a drugs expert who spent more than a decade in law enforcement and now testifies in court on matters related to drug gangs and laundering methodologies, commented on the strategic replication within the criminal underworld:

"It's a well-trodden path that one crime group will just copy another when they see something is working."

While cash use is declining nationally, barbershops remain predominantly cash-based enterprises.

"Then there's the added attraction of this being an unregulated market that isn't monitored by any government body,"

Carroll explained.

"So there's a lack of enforcement, without the one-off hygiene checks you'd get with food businesses."

He noted the increasing use of the "Turkish" brand identity as a façade. Many such shops are operated by individuals and groups from different backgrounds, including Kurdish and Albanian nationals. Nonetheless, Carroll stated:

"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."

There have been previous high-profile criminal prosecutions that exposed the darker realities behind this barbershop façade. In 2022, Hewa Rahimpur, an Iranian-Kurdish asylum seeker and former barber, was arrested as part of an investigation into the trafficking of over 10,000 migrants into Dover by small boat.

The 30-year-old, who was granted asylum after claiming political persecution, was operating a barbershop in Camden, North London, when he came under suspicion. Police arrested him while driving a high-end Mercedes. Investigators allege that Rahimpur and his associates laundered £13 million in criminal proceeds through the business.

Rahimpur was eventually extradited to Belgium, where he stood trial and was sentenced to 11 years’ imprisonment for his role in what prosecutors described as a sophisticated people smuggling syndicate. His story marked one of the earliest instances linking barbering businesses directly with organised transnational crime.

Similarly, in a separate trial at Kingston Crown Court, 33-year-old Afghan national Gul Wali Jabarkhel was convicted alongside three others for their involvement in a migrant smuggling network.

Jabarkhel, who operated a barbershop in Colindale, North London, had allegedly used the business as a base of operations from which he attempted to recruit lorry drivers to bring migrants into the UK hidden within cargo vehicles. He fled to Kabul in 2020 after discovering he was under police surveillance but was later convicted in absentia.

The National Crime Agency described the network as "a ruthless operation when human beings were little more than goods to profit from".

In another prominent case, West London barbershop owner Tarek Namouz was sentenced to 12 years in prison for sending funds to ISIS-linked militants in Syria. Prosecutors said he transferred over £11,000 to fund the purchase of weapons and explosives for use in the country’s ongoing civil conflict.

Namouz reportedly lived above his salon in Hammersmith and was overheard boasting while on remand that he had in fact sent more than double the officially recorded amount—approximately £25,000.

While the National Crime Agency continues to investigate the wider infiltration of the barbershop industry, legitimate business owners are voicing frustration at the sweeping suspicion that now shadows their trade. One such trader, Reeza Jafari, who runs Pasha in Tunbridge Wells, gave an interview last year in which he expressed his growing exasperation.

"People assume that if you own a Turkish barbers then you must have something to hide, that you have these links to organised crime," he said.

"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."

Critically, the current legal framework surrounding barbershop operations allows many of these businesses to remain outside formal scrutiny. Barbers are not required to register with Companies House and can instead operate under sole trader status, making them inherently difficult to monitor or regulate.

The chair-renting model—where multiple independent hairdressers operate under one roof—further obscures financial oversight and ownership accountability.

What has emerged from these latest raids is a picture of widespread abuse of a loosely regulated industry—a trade whose cash-heavy, low-overhead nature makes it particularly vulnerable to infiltration by criminal networks.

The proliferation of barbershops well beyond the apparent demand, the lack of regulatory oversight, and the use of traditional styling and cultural branding as a front for covert operations, has now firmly placed this sector under law enforcement scrutiny.

The NCA and regional crime units will now be under pressure to intensify their efforts to trace criminal finance across the high street, particularly where those fronts are seemingly incongruous with local economic conditions. With further arrests expected, and intelligence continuing to build from the Machinize operation and beyond, the full scale of this sector’s criminal exploitation may only just be emerging.

Well, that’s all for now. But until our next article, please stay tuned, stay informed, but most of all stay safe, and I’ll see you then.