Unfortunately I missed all the excitement.
During three days of raids they say they found 5.1 million illicit cigarettes, $1.7 million in cash, 1.4 tonnes of loose illicit tobacco, 41,000 vapes and cars worth over $500,000 in total.
One of the premises raided was just down the end of my street, a ‘gift store’ in a small group of shops. Police entered from the rear and found an Aladdin’s cave of cash and tobacco products.
Blend in and keep a low profile – the proprietors had no understanding of this concept. There was something obviously fishy about the ‘gift store’ from day one. The front window was crowded with crap and junk that you would only buy as a bad joke birthday present. And while I’ve long thought of myself as a regular customer to these shops, I managed to miss making a personal connection with the staff. The lads apparently earnt a reputation for being obnoxious, goofing off in their cars out front with music way up. And accosting anyone who walked by with ‘Hey, want a cigarette?’
Fiction loves the master criminals and their razor-sharp teams, but the reality is often a very different story.
The mind is an unexplored country. 
Back in my smoking days, when I would take a break from my job as a bureaucratic empty suit and stand outside the agency for a few minutes, inhaling the rich flavor of an American Spirit cigarette (one of our best brands), strangers would occasionally come up and bum a smoke. One day, a lady approached and asked for a cigarette, and we got to talking. She had essentially been homeless for years, but for a long time had managed to scrape together enough money to buy food and other essentials by selling bootleg cigarettes on the street (i.e., cigarettes that had been transported in from lower tax states and sold below local prices). She mentioned that she was part of a group that did a pretty good business in Washington, DC, but eventually had been driven out of the trade. I asked her what happened, and she said “cartels”. There was apparently so much money in the business that Mexican cartels had muscled in and run off all the independent operators.
By: Paco on June 23, 2024
at 7:45 AM
Your Mexican is our Middle Eastern.
By: Gregoryno6 on June 23, 2024
at 7:59 AM