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Man Spent $1.6 Million On Tobacco in N.Va.
Jump to full article: The Washington Post, 2009-06-04
Author: Jerry Markon Washington Post Staff Writer
Intro: A New Jersey man has pleaded guilty in Alexandria federal court to purchasing thousands of cartons of cigarettes, the latest in a growing number of cases targeting smugglers who buy truckloads of cigarettes in Northern Virginia and sell them in other states without paying taxes on them.
Mark A. Frondelli, 48, entered his plea May 26 in U.S. District Court to one count of transporting, receiving, possessing and purchasing contraband cigarettes. He admitted in court documents that he had purchased more than 77,000 cartons of untaxed cigarettes from undercover agents about 44 times in Northern Virginia, mostly in Alexandria and Annandale. He put them in a box truck to conceal the cartons and drove to New York and New Jersey to sell them, the documents said.
Christopher Amolsch, an attorney for Frondelli, said he was lured into smuggling by the high potential for profit. . . .
Smuggling operations have long relied on suppliers in Virginia, where the state tax of 30 cents per pack is among the nation's lowest, partly because of the tobacco industry's historic prominence and political influence in the state.
Smugglers purchase cigarettes in Virginia, through criminal means or legally in bulk from wholesale outlets, and sell them in the New York area. . . .
Campbell said cigarette smuggling in Northern Virginia and nationally is increasingly a large-scale criminal enterprise, run by Russian, Asian and other organized crime groups. Federal officials have also linked the smuggling to terrorism since the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, saying that terrorists use it to fund their activities.
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