Saturday, May 18, 2013

2 Ocean City brothers central to cigarette smuggling ring

 

Police: 2 Ocean City brothers central to cigarette smuggling ring Large sums seized in raid; authorities fear proceeds funded Islamic militants

May 16, 2013   | 

 

Written by

Brian Shane

Staff Writer

 

OCEAN CITY - Charles Mack was in his driveway early Wednesday when he saw a car speed up to a house across the street from his on Whisper Trace Lane.

Ten more black SUVs followed, with two blocking the street's ends. About 20 police officers wearing bulletproof vests exited the vehicles.

 

The officers banged on his neighbor's door. "We have a search warrant! Open up!" they said. Soon, police would lead a man from the house in handcuffs.

 

Mack said he heard the whirring of a metal grinder, and watched police saw through the hinges on a safe. A police officer came over to him and asked:

"Did you ever see a million dollars?" It was part of the $1.4 million in cash that had been seized from the property, hidden in home and car, along with three handguns.

 

Police say the two brothers who lived here, in side-by-side homes in Oyster Harbor, led a cigarette smuggling operation that funneled Virginia-bought cigarettes into New York City, generating tens of millions of dollars in revenue. Police spent 17 months poring through financial records, and used aerial surveillance and wiretaps to crack the case.

 

Basel Ramadan, 42, of Ocean City, is the accused boss and ringleader of what authorities are calling an untaxed cigarette distribution the enterprise.

His brother, Samir Ramadan, 39, another local resident, was his right-hand man who focused on control and disbursement of the cash generated by the enterprise, according to a 303-page indictment made public May 16.

 

The Ramadans as of May 16 are in custody at the Worcester County Jail, awaiting extradition to New York. Both men had warrants for their arrest issued May 15, charging them with being fugitives from justice, and wanted by New York authorities.

 

"We don't know where all of that money went, but what we do know is deeply troubling," said New York Attorney General Eric T. Schneiderman at a press conference Thursday in New York City. "We know that some members of this group have ties to some very dangerous people... We know that criminal rings like this have been used in the past to support terrorist groups in other parts of the world."

 

A 244-count indictment charges 16 men with enterprise corruption, money laundering and related tax crimes. Each alleged co-conspirator faces up to

25 years in prison if convicted. So far, 15 men have been taken into custody without bond. One of the 16 suspects flew to Jordan last week and has not been apprehended, Schneiderman also said.

 

The traffickers have alleged links to known terrorists, including Omar Abdel-Rahman, the blind cleric serving a life sentence for conspiring to blow up New York City landmarks, according to New York authorities. That combination has raised concerns about where the money went.

 

"This is not the end of our investigation," the attorney general added. "We are following the money. We will work to track it down wherever it went."

 

Authorities say some of the suspects charged in the smuggling scheme have links to top officials of Hamas, the Islamist militant group that rules the Gaza Strip. The U.S and Israel consider Hamas to be a terrorist organization.

 

According to New York City Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly, one of the men indicted previously ran a business in the 1990s that was partly bankrolled by the blind sheik; another was a "confidant" of Rashid Baz, the Lebanese immigrant who shot up a van full of Hasidic students on the Brooklyn Bridge in 1994, killing one; and a third lived in the same Brooklyn apartment as the secretary of a key Hamas fundraiser and leader in the 2000s.

 

Basel Ramadan, who court documents also identify as Abu Salah, led the operation from Maryland, the indictment states. Using their business fronts in Virginia, the Ramadan brothers purchased cigarettes from at least one wholesaler, Cooper Booth Wholesale Inc,. and stored them at their distribution hub, a warehouse in Dagsboro, Del., authorities allege.

 

The ring moved more than 1.37 million cartons of untaxed cigarettes into New York City boroughs and two upstate counties, around 20,000 cigarettes a week, the indictment states. Cigarettes were transported several New York-based distributors and re-sellers - all of whom are Palestinian, officials say -who sold product to groceries and merchants. A driver would move the supply and the cash back and forth to New York, according to the indictment.

 

Police found that the Ramadans had purchased tens of millions of dollars worth of cigarettes. More than $55 million in cash, transported in garbage bags, had been taken into Ocean City and laundered through various small businesses, the indictment states. The driver at times would drive with as much as $100,000, authorities allege.

 

"This business is better than selling drugs," one co-conspirator in Brooklyn, N.Y., was heard to tell another, via federal wiretaps.

 

The case began last summer, when investigators came to the New York Attorney General's Office with reports that one of the suspects had been trafficking in stolen baby formula. A month later, their investigation showed "a much broader, extraordinarily profitable, cigarette smuggling enterprise,"

Schneiderman said.

 

Authorities said the Ramadans generated more than $10 million in profits from their illegal activities. Taxes for a pack of cigarettes in Virgina are

30 cents per pack; in New York, they are $4.35. The operation cost New York State more than $80 million in lost sales tax revenue, Schneiderman said.

 

They've only recovered "a small portion" of the illegal cash, Schneiderman said. Forfeiture actions are underway, and as of Thursday afternoon, authorities had frozen more than $6 million in assets. They hope to freeze all proceeds from what they allege is a criminal enterprise.

 

"It's a very important step in our effort to follow the money," he said.

 

Back in Oyster Harbor, Helen Lambie lives across the street from the Ramadans. She said she saw the commotion outside, but stayed in her house to watch "all those cars and police going in and out of the house."

 

The Ramadan brothers kept to themselves, Lambie said.

 

"I couldn't tell you how many were living in those two homes, but there were a lot of children," she said. "We remarked about the children when they came out to play. They were quiet; they weren't like other children where they're shouting and running. They stayed so quiet. We always remarked what nice children they were."

 

Roger Flather, who lives on the same side of the street and four doors down from the Ramadan homes, said he was out walking his dogs when the raid happened. He said after several attempts to gain entry by knocking, police were about to break down the door, when someone finally answered it.

 

He said police were taking boxes out of the house and were confiscating vehicles. Then he watched as police brought a safe out and used an electric saw to cut the hinges off.

 

"It was full of money," Flather said. "They had it all out stacked up. He said when they raided the house, he had another $100,000 just sitting on the desk in there."

 

==========================================

(F)AIR USE NOTICE: All original content and/or articles and graphics in this message are copyrighted, unless specifically noted otherwise. All rights to these copyrighted items are reserved. Articles and graphics have been placed within for educational and discussion purposes only, in compliance with "Fair Use" criteria established in Section 107 of the Copyright Act of 1976.

The principle of "Fair Use" was established as law by Section 107 of The Copyright Act of 1976. "Fair Use" legally eliminates the need to obtain permission or pay royalties for the use of previously copyrighted materials if the purposes of display include "criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, and research." Section 107 establishes four criteria for determining whether the use of a work in any particular case qualifies as a "fair use". A work used does not necessarily have to satisfy all four criteria to qualify as an instance of "fair use". Rather, "fair use" is determined by the overall extent to which the cited work does or does not substantially satisfy the criteria in their totality. If you wish to use copyrighted material for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use,' you must obtain permission from the copyright owner. For more information go to:

http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml

 

THIS DOCUMENT MAY CONTAIN COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL. COPYING AND DISSEMINATION IS PROHIBITED WITHOUT PERMISSION OF THE COPYRIGHT OWNERS.

 

 

 

 

 

No comments:

Post a Comment