WORLD : Tobacco Contraband Sniffed Out
Customs officials, looking into the back of a 45-foot truck a New York state man claimed was empty, uncovered the largest cigarette seizure in Canadian history.
The 691 cartons of American and Canadian cigarettes and tins of tobacco, stacked more than six feet high, are worth about $850,000, Andy Lalonde of Revenue Canada’s border patrol said today. The cigarettes, bought from American wholesalers, are sold in the underground market, skirting taxes.
George Bell, 25, of North Bangor, N.Y., has been charged with smuggling.
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