Authorities rounded up a group of contraband-cigarette dealers who were selling more than $9 million a year of untaxed butts that they purchased at Long Island Indian reservations, authorities said.
The gang also allegedly sold counterfeit cigarettes smuggled in from China.
The nine arrested men included several mysterious Middle Eastern men with multiple passports from Jordan and the Palestinian Authority who secretly funneled millions of illegal profits back to countries like Saudi Arabia, investigators said.
Federal authorities are now trying to determine if the group has any link to terrorists or a terrorist support organization.
Suffolk DA Thomas Spota yesterday announced the “Operation Smoke-Out” arrests and displayed some of the $1.2 million in cash seized, along with the contraband cigarettes and other evidence.
The task force, which also included investigators from the State Attorney General’s Office, federal ATF agents and Suffolk County Police, also confiscated a .45-caliber pistol, seven vehicles and about 50,000 cigarettes.
Spota said the butt-leggers bought smokes for $20 a carton and sold them for about $52 – about half of the legal $90-a-carton price.
Authorities also seized counterfeit cigarette tax stamps and the fake look-alike cigarettes produced in China that mimicked popular U.S. brands – minus the U.S. tax stamps.
Spota said the city and state lost $7.2 million in taxes as a result of the illegal dealings of those arrested. Among those arrested on charges of transport of untaxed cigarettes and other charges were two brothers who live in Staten Island but were born in Israel – Ashraf Liqiania, 34, and his brother Iyas Leqyanya, 33.
Of the other seven suspects, only one was born in the U.S., Tamin Nagi, 22, of The Bronx. He was ordered held in lieu of $4 million bond or $2 million cash bail.