A RESTAURANT and a cash-and-carry store in London’s East End have been caught selling fake goods to customers. These included counterfeit condoms, tobacco and beer

By Mike Brooke

A RESTAURANT and a cash-and-carry store in London’s East End have been caught selling fake goods to customers.

Trading Standards officers raided the premises of EasAnisha Cash & Carry in Bethnal Green’s Redchurch Street and seized counterfeit condoms and tobacco, along with tobacco smuggled in from abroad which wasn’t marked with EU health warnings.

The store was fined �500 by Thames magistrates and ordered to pay �500 prosecutions costs after admitting offences under the 1994 Trade Marks Act and 1987 Consumer Protection Act.

On the same day the supervisor at a restaurant in the famous Brick Lane curry mile’ appeared before the court for passing off other beer as Cobra and Kingfisher brands.

Kazi Moshahid Ali, the supervisor at Cafe Raj, in Hanbury Street, Spitalfields, was caught out by a customer who knew his beer and complained to Tower Hamlets trading standards office.

He admitted offences under the Trade Marks Act and the 1990 Food Safety Act, as well as 2008 Unfair Trading’ regulations.

Officials from the Town Hall went into the curry house and made test purchases, only to find the beer sold as Cobra was really Carlsberg, and the Kingfisher brand was really something else.

“This is a prime example of where it was thought to be acceptable to rip off diners by selling them fake goods,” said a Town Hall spokesman. “This profiteering scam is not victimless. It rips off businesses and the public who believe they are buying a different product.”

Magistrates fined Ali �2,000 on four offences and ordered him to pay �750 costs. They also suspended his Personal Licence for a month.