Tobacco.org

• South Florida Cigarette Smuggling Funds Terrorism  

In less than five minutes, the brutal attack left Quinsey and Azimkar dead, the two pizza deliverymen and a pair of guards clinging to life, and the historic 1998 peace agreement between Irish Catholics and Protestants imperiled.

The bullets rang out thousands of miles away, but investigators now believe the assault had its origin in an anonymous cargo ship docked at a bustling South Florida port.

A gray-haired 57-year-old Cutler Bay man with no criminal history named Roman Vidal sold millions of cigarettes that had been smuggled to Dublin criminals who funded the terrorist group that killed Quinsey and Azimkar, investigators say. The charges are just the latest link between black-market U.S. smokes and violent terrorist groups around the world.

It's the first cigarette smuggling case in Florida with explicit ties to a terrorist organization, but at least four major rings around the country have been busted in the past seven years with proven connections to Hezbollah, the Iraqi Kurdistan Workers Party, and North Korean weapons runners. A four-month-long New Times review of court filings and interviews with investigators reveals exactly why smuggling smokes may be the best racket for America's enemies. . . .

For the average smoker, those under-the-table, tax-free packs might seem like a bargain. But as the recent history of cigarette smuggling vividly illustrates, when you buy black-market smokes, you never know whose paycheck you're signing. . . .

In 1999, Garcia was called to Atlantic City to help Lou Calvarese — a hefty agent with a long undercover FBI résumé. Calvarese introduced him to May and Charles Liu, a Los Angeles Chinese-American couple with an incredible operation.

Though most smuggling operations involve actual commercial cigarettes, the Lius contracted with four factories in China that produced quality knockoffs of Marlboros, Camels, and other major brands. . . .

That meeting was just the beginning of a massive six-year operation. Garcia would eventually infiltrate the highest levels of the Lius' international smuggling network, a staggering chain involving nearly 100 people in China, the United States, and Canada. Garcia eventually learned that the operation had ties to North Korean weapons smugglers.

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For the average smoker, those under-the-table, tax-free packs might seem like a bargain. But as the recent history of cigarette smuggling vividly illustrates, when you buy black-market smokes, you never know whose paycheck you're signing.
Text from yet another trenchant, well-researched and well-written article on cigarette smuggling, this time from a small South Florida paper. The big mainstream media orgs are getting drubbed on this subject.