18 Face Federal Charges for Contraband Cigarettes

An Independence couple and their Wichita lawyer are among 18 defendants charged in a federal indictment accusing them of conspiring to transport more than $17 million worth of contraband cigarettes to New York, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri said Wednesday.

The 43-count indictment, which was unsealed Wednesday, alleges the defendants conspired to transport hundreds of thousands of cartons of contraband cigarettes bought from undercover federal agents to New York without paying the required $4.35 per pack excise tax.

The U.S. attorney’s office said most of the cigarettes were sold primarily from 2010 to 2012 on Indian reservations in New York, which lost more than $8 million in excise taxes.

“When unscrupulous companies traffic in contraband cigarettes, they are stealing from the public through millions of dollars in lost tax revenue,” said Tammy Dickinson, U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri, in a release.

Craig Sheffler is accused of buying contraband cigarettes from undercover ATF agents in Kansas City and selling them. Prosecutors said that in one transaction, Nicole Sheffler entered an undercover warehouse carrying an orange bucket containing two paper bags with about $400,000 in cash.

This article appeared in print on page 5 of the August 15th, 2013 edition of Hamodia.