[caption id="attachment_4417" align="alignleft" width="225" caption="Cigarettes"]
[/caption]GHN News Editor - This year crime continues to pay, but the consequences are steep nonetheless, for the culture and the criminal too as demonstrated by a recent example involving tobacco trafficking.
The Department of Justice, regularly provides information and updates about how folks try to make money through crime.
This week United States Attorney Benjamin B. Wagner reigned in a fellow with a Los Angeles jury conviction of interstate commerce fraud and trafficking in contraband tobacco. Abdurrahman Yousuf, 46, of Calabasas, Calif., was found guilty of 23 counts of interstate commerce fraud and trafficking in contraband tobacco.
Yousuf's crime might seem minor at first glance, but it was costly to the State of California that lost excise taxes that according to reports could be as high as $10 million. He sold options other than cigarettes to distributors in a number of locations using obscure interstate carriers.
This case is the product of an extensive investigation by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and the California Board of Equalization.
The maximum penalty for each count of mail fraud is 20 years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and a three-year term of supervised release. The maximum penalty for each count of trafficking in contraband tobacco and each count of conspiracy is five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and a three-year term of
supervised release. The actual sentence, however, is the court's decision.
Crime pays, as we see, but the person who does it often will pay even more in the end, as the federal government continues to focus on interstate trafficking
of goods across the country to evade taxes during a time when the country needs those taxes the most.
