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• Cutler Bay man smuggles cigarettes through the Port of Miami and goes to prison 

So this is what a decade of international conspiracy with European underworld kingpins gets you? An empty bank account, a blue-collar ranch house in Cutler Bay with two unpaid mortgages, and a date with a federal judge.

For Roman Vidal, a 58-year-old with a thick mane of gray hair and a white mustache, that about sums it up. To that meager list, Vidal also can add 24 months in federal prison, three years' probation, and a $1.5 million fine -- the sentence U.S. District Judge Alan Gold handed down last week.

All in all, it's an inglorious finish for a man who led the largest cigarette-smuggling ring busted in the Magic City, a scheme that funneled more than 20 million black-market smokes through the Port of Miami, with some of the proceeds perhaps funding deadly Irish terrorists. . . .

Vidal's European contacts were helping to finance the Real IRA, a splinter terror group in Northern Ireland. A few weeks after Vidal's arrest, the group massacred two soldiers and shot two pizza delivery men outside a British base near Belfast.

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