According to police in the United Kingdom, counterfeit cigarette sellers gain a profit of 2 GB Pounds per pack, leading to a rough estimate of 1 Billion GB Pounds in total market profit from selling fake cigarettes.
When customers in the UK come across packs of cigarettes that are sold less than the normal retail price, police estimate that 85 percent of the time the packs are counterfeits.
Around 1 million packs of counterfeit cigarettes are seized by police in the United Kingdom each day.
Source: The Organised Crime Task Force, “Counterfeit Cigarettes 2004” ,Confronting the Threat: Illicit Cigarettes.