Newsday (New York)
October 14, 2004 Thursday
CITY EDITION
Thirteen charged in cigarette smuggling
BY ANTHONY M. DESTEFANO. STAFF WRITER
An Asian organized crime group teamed up with a group of Armenian and
Polish immigrants to smuggle millions of dollars worth of counterfeit
Marlboro cigarettes into Brooklyn and Queens from China, federal
prosecutors charged yesterday.
The cigarette smuggling led to cigarette tax losses of more than $1
million to New York State, officials said.
A total of 13 people, including alleged ringleader Azat Oganessian,
33, an Armenian immigrant who has been living in Brooklyn, were
charged yesterday in an indictment filed in federal court in Brooklyn
with conspiracy to smuggle the cigarettes as well as narcotics
trafficking.
The investigation, which involved a special FBI-NYPD task force on
Eurasian crime, lasted 19 months and was sparked by an informant who
had information about suspected cigarette smuggling and narcotics in
the city’s Polish immigrant community, federal law enforcement
officials said. The task force focuses on immigrant groups from the
former Soviet Union and East Asia.
Officials with the U.S. attorney’s office in Brooklyn said more than
$5 million in fake Marlboro cigarettes were made in China and
transported by the Chinese gang to Los Angeles. It was there, the
officials said, that the Oganessian organization picked up more than
800 cases of the cigarettes and trucked them to New Jersey and
Philadelphia. Once on the East Coast, the defendants placed fake New
York State tax stamps on the packages.
Each case of cigarettes contained 50 cartons, amounting to a total of
4,000 cartons shipped as part of the alleged conspiracy, Assistant
U.S. Attorney Scott Morvillo said.
The cigarettes, which the gang acquired for $10 a carton, were
generally sold for $22 to $32 a carton to delis and restaurants in
Brooklyn and Queens, he said.
The indictment also charged Oganessian, who is known as Ozzy, with
conspiring to distribute more than 500 grams of methamphetamine. Six
other defendants also were charged with being part of that drug
conspiracy. Oganessian’s attorney could not be reached for comment
yesterday.
Oganessian, who was already being held without bail on the earlier
case, didn’t appear in court yesterday.