Hunts Point News: Authorities Snuff Out $2M bootleg Smokes Ring

Hunts Point News: Authorities Snuff Out $2M bootleg Smokes Ring: Authorities Snuff Out $2M bootleg Smokes Ring BRONX, NEW YORK, JULY 9- District Attorney Robert Johnson announced mu...

Authorities Snuff Out $2M bootleg Smokes Ring

Authorities Snuff Out $2M bootleg Smokes Ring

BRONX, NEW YORK, JULY 9- District Attorney Robert Johnson announced multiple indictments of 20 people and six corporations containing 1,345 counts regarding a major smuggling operation that brought more than 44,000 untaxed cartons of cigarettes from Virginia to the Bronx during a single five-month period in 2014 alone. The participants are accused of evading more than $2.978 million in New York State and City taxes. The total maximum tax penalty, for New York City and State combined, is more than $35,768,000.

The various defendants face State felony charges ranging from Enterprise Corruption, Criminal Tax Fraud, and Money Laundering, to New York City Administrative Code violations of the Cigarette Tax laws.

After a two-and-a-half-year multi-agency investigation, 19 men and one woman were charged following simultaneous arrests in New York, Virginia, Connecticut and New Jersey. The Bronx County grand jury indictments were unsealed with the Supreme Court arraignment of several of the defendants in Part 60, before Justice Steven Barrett.  The following defendants are named in one or more indictment:

Cigarette smuggling is big business.  It is estimated that, in New York State, 58 percent of all cigarettes sold are untaxed, and smuggled in primarily from Virginia. With per pack prices topping $11 and more, bringing in untaxed cigarettes is very profitable – New York state and city taxes add $5.85 to each pack.

It is alleged in the indictment that the boss, Mohamed Mustafa, headed the operation by acquiring cigarettes for distribution from Virginia, storing those cigarettes at 2118 Matthews Avenue in Morris Park and other locations in the Bronx, and by controlling the distribution of cigarettes to the New York City area without paying New York State or City tobacco taxes, thereby generating hundreds of thousands of dollars in illicit proceeds for himself and other members of the enterprise. His lieutenant, Hiyad Chaib, is alleged to have assisted the criminal enterprise in all aspects of the operation, and would serve as the central contact for the employees and associates when Mustafa was away.

Mustafa and Chaib determined the New York-based distributors to whom they would sell cigarettes, the prices the

distributors had to pay for cigarettes, and the times and locations at which the distributors would exchange money for cigarettes, it is further alleged. They also controlled the storage facilities and both of them actively answered a “business line” to collect orders and arrange deliveries. Each week, almost 2,000 cartons of cigarettes (400,000 cigarettes) would pass through the enterprise costing the state over $100,000 in tax revenue. The total tax fraud is estimated to be close to $3 million; total maximum tax penalties, if the defendants are convicted, will reach nearly $36 million.

Indictment papers also describe how Mustafa and Chaib originally acquired the majority of the cigarettes they distributed in the Bronx from suppliers Rabih Saba and Moeen Khan, residents of the Commonwealth of Virginia, who owned and managed a chain of mattress stores (“The Mattress Place”) and dollar stores around Richmond, Virginia. Indeed, Saba and Khan used their Virginia businesses, in part, as collection and distribution centers for cigarettes purchased in Virginia with only the low Virginia cigarette tax, and thereafter controlled the distribution of

the cigarettes to the New York City area without anyone associated with the Enterprise paying New York State or City tobacco taxes for those cigarettes. They also used their business and personal accounts to transfer money from the Bronx and Manhattan to them in Virginia.

To generate said money, Saba and Khan are accused of forming a network of cigarette buyers in Virginia who would visit Costco, Sam’s Club, Wawa, and other retail sellers of cigarettes, to purchase cartons of cigarettes in a large enough quantity to make trafficking them to New York profitable. Saba and Khan arranged with Mustafa and Chaib for near-daily deliveries to New York. Some of the proceeds were also sent to a number of the defendants’ home countries in Africa and the Middle East.

Money seized from the operation totals more than $100,000.

Operation Smoke Brake is being prosecuted by Assistant District Attorneys W. Dyer Halpern, Jessica-Deanna Lupo, and Caitlin Carroll of the Arson/Auto/Economic Crimes Bureau, which is under the supervision of Counsel to the Investigations Division Mary Jo Blanchard, Bureau Chief William Zelenka and Executive A.D.A. Thomas Leahy.

#Cigarettes #BronxDA #Bronxnews

Hunts Point News: Inmate charged with attacking social worker in Rik...

Hunts Point News: Inmate charged with attacking social worker in Rik...: Inmate charged with attacking social worker in Rikers District Attorney Robert Johnson announced the indictment of 35-yea...

Inmate charged with attacking social worker in Rikers

Inmate charged with attacking social worker in Rikers

District Attorney Robert Johnson announced the indictment of 35-year-old Jonathan Hodgson in the brutal June attack on a Rikers Island medical worker.

Hodgson was arraigned in Bronx Supreme Court before Justice Joseph Dawson and pled not guilty to: assault in the first degree (Class B Felony); assault in the second degree (3 counts) (Class D Felony); assault in the third degree (Class A Misdemeanor) and resisting Arrest (Class A Misdemeanor). 

Hodgson is being held at Rikers Island’s George R. Vierno Center on an underlying Manhattan indictment for attempted murder in the second degree and assault in the first degree for a January, 2015 attack. On June 18^th, he stepped into the office where 69-year-old mental health clinician Ralph Atlas was working.  

Hodgson is accused of, without warning or provocation, pummeling the Corizon employee in the face and head, breaking the clinician’s jaw, fracturing his eye socket and nose, as well as causing other injuries for which the victim had to be hospitalized.        

Bail was set at $10,000 following the D.A.’s request for $250,000; Hodgson is to return to court on September 1, 2015, Part 77, Hall of Justice, 265 E. 161^st Street, Room 680. The defendant has asked to represent himself in Court.

If convicted of the charges, Hodgson faces up to 25 years behind bars.  The case against Hodgson is being prosecuted by Assistant District Attorney Ara Ayvazian of the Bronx D.A. Intake Bureau.  The charges in this indictment are merely an accusation and the defendant is presumed innocent until proven guilty.    

#RikersIsland #NYPD #BronxDA #Bronxnews      

Hunts Point News: Driver sentenced for fatally striking mother of tw...

Hunts Point News: Driver sentenced for fatally striking mother of tw...: Driver sentenced for fatally striking mother of twins BRONX, NEW YORK, JUNE 29- District Attorney Robert Johnson a...

Driver sentenced for fatally striking mother of twins

Driver sentenced for fatally striking mother of twins

BRONX, NEW YORK, JUNE 29- District Attorney Robert Johnson announced that 29-year-old Agustus Jenkins of Montgomery, NY, has been sentenced to the maximum sentence of 1-1/3-to-4 years behind bars for the January 2014 death of the mother of twin toddlers, Nydja Herring, of the Bronx.

Jenkins was found guilty of Criminally Negligent Homicide, a Class E Felony, following an 11-day trial before Justice Peter Benitez, during which the jury returned their verdict on June 4^th after less than a day’s deliberation.

The 32-year-old victim was crossing the street at East Tremont and Van Nest Avenues, on the way to the store to buy milk for her twin toddlers, when she was struck by Jenkins’ speeding vehicle. He was behind the wheel but had a friend with him, along with two children aged four and 11.  Blood alcohol tests showed he was operating the vehicle above the legal limit. He was also driving on a suspended license. Ironically, Jenkins was coming back from the wake for a baby who had died from SIDS.

Not only were Nydja Herring’s twin 2-year-olds left without a mother, the victim’s own mother was scheduled to receive a kidney from her daughter. Herring’s mother is still on the organ transplant list.

#NYPD #BronxDistrictAttorney #FatalAccident #Bronxnews

Hunts Point News: Restaurant Charges to Use Bathroom

Hunts Point News: Restaurant Charges to Use Bathroom: Gotta Go? Better Have the #Dough! Restaurant Charges to Use Bathroom By David Greene BRONX, NEW YORK, JUNE 29...