TENS of thousands of illicit cigarettes have been sniffed out by a police dog in three Ilkeston shops.
Counterfeit tobacco was hidden inside wooden steps, the bottom of a drinks refrigerator and within security door panels.
The haul's street value is about £20,000.
Derbyshire County Council's trading standards team carried out the raid alongside police and the sniffer dog.
More than 30,000 cigarettes plus 560 pouches of hand-rolling tobacco weighing 28kg were seized.
Police said three people were arrested, questioned and released on bail pending further inquiries.
Councillor Dave Allen, cabinet member for health and communities, said he hoped the raids and subsequent arrests will deter others from making or selling illicit cigarettes.
He said: "This is the second time we've used a sniffer dog to find tobacco and it sends out a clear message to retailers that there's no hiding place for people selling counterfeit or non-duty-paid tobacco.
"These latest raids underline that we'll act on each and every report of counterfeit tobacco as we combat the big increase that we've seen in this illegal trade over the past 12 months or so.
"We're standing up for legitimate local traders whose businesses are being damaged by counterfeit and illicit tobacco that can be sold at vastly reduced prices and doesn't carry the health warnings that are legally required in this country."
Illicit tobacco sales have been a growing problem in Derbyshire, with complaints doubling from 30 in 2011 to 60 last year.
The most prominent case over the past year involved Dutch national Marius Klein, who was jailed for two-and-a-half years last November for his role in a multi-million-pound counterfeit cigarette operation in the county.
He was responsible for organising the manufacture, production and sale of counterfeit cigarettes from his base in Poland. The illicit business, costing more than £131 million a year in lost revenue, was foiled when HM Revenue and Customs officers swooped on the factory, which was capable of making up to 625 million counterfeit cigarettes and five million pouches of fake tobacco a year.
It led to the county council and police stepping up efforts to tackle the problem. In March, a sniffer dog found tobacco with a street value of £6,535 in raids on shops in Chesterfield and Belper.
