Trio Convicted of Helping Cuba Make Fake Winstons

If these Winstons didn’t taste good like a cigarette should, it could be because they were counterfeited in Cuba.

Three men, including a former R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Co. engineer, were convicted Wednesday of violating export laws and the U.S. trade embargo against Cuba by shipping equipment to the island to make imitation Winstons.

They exported a carton-stuffing machine, cigarette-wrapping equipment, red and gold ink and other items through Panama to Cuba, where the fake Winstons were manufactured for export, according to prosecutors.

“It should be a big embarrassment for Cuba,” said Keith Prager, who supervises the investigating U.S. Customs unit. “This case . . . shows how desperate the Cuban government is, that they are down to counterfeiting cigarettes.”

Customs officials heard about the scheme after a tip on some equipment shipments in March, 1989, and the discovery of 1,800 cases of Cuban-made Winstons in the Netherlands in August.

Prosecutors claimed that sales of the American cigarettes could have made $2 million for Cuba’s foreign exchange-starved economy. It wasn’t clear whether any of the cigarettes were eventually sold.

Convicted after a nine-day trial were former R. J. Reynolds engineering foreman Michael Macko; Emilio Ortiz De Zevallos, the Peruvian director of a Panamanian export company, and Frank Van Ameringen, who ran several small tobacco companies from his home in Miami.

They face prison terms of 15 to 21 months. U.S. District Judge Lenore Nesbitt set sentencing for July 23.