Cheap smokes

To make that much money, the thief or thieves will likely have to smuggle the cigarettes out-of-state, where state cigarette taxes are much higher than in North Carolina.

Law enforcement officials say cigarette smuggling has increased significantly since 2002, Cheap smokes cigarettes Cigarettes4smokes.com sales fresh, cheap and high quality tax free discount cigarettes online!  when the federal government and 21 states raised their cigarette taxes, with New York spiking its levy from 8 cents to $1.50 a pack. New Jersey has the highest tax -- $2.05 a pack. In North Carolina, cigarette smokers pay 5 cents a pack in tax, the second lowest in the country behind Kentucky.

"If you take a pack of cigarettes in North Carolina and take them to New York, you can only guess how much money you will generate," said Roarke Wright, resident agent in charge for the Bureau of Alcohol and Tobacco and Firearms' Greensboro office. "Nine thousand dollars in cigarettes here is going to make someone a bunch of money when they take (them) to Boston or Canada."

The cigarettes were stolen Aug. 14 from Cheap Smokes at 3739 cheap smokes  High Point Road. Store owner Michael Senneville told police the thief or thieves pried open the store's back door, taking the cigarettes and a safe that was bolted to the floor.

No arrests have been made, police said Tuesday.

Senneville said his shop has been burglarized twice since November.

The fate of the stolen cigarettes is anyone's guess, he said.

"They could sell them here locally on the black market,'' he said. "They could be http://www.ez-cigarettes.com/tobacco/tobacco_online.html taking them to New York. I don't know."

Senneville would not say what brand of cigarettes was stolen except to say they were "good sellers."

In her seven years of selling cigarettes in Greensboro, Peggy Armour has seen plenty of Northerners wanting a bargain.

"Some of them are surprised when they see our prices, and others know what they are doing," said Armour, manager of Charlie's Tobacco Outlet on Alamance Church Road. "(The thieves) are probably selling them for drugs or maybe even taking them up North."

To protect their inventory, Armour's bosses have put bars on the windows and keep all cigarettes behind the counter.

At Charlie's Tobacco Outlet, a carton of Camel Lights fetches $23.21 including tax. At Jake's Corner in New York City, the same carton costs $81.

A clerk who answered the phone at Jake's said she gets her own cigarettes from high quality 555 & 555 lights http://www.ez-cigarettes.com/tobacco/555_cigarettes.html her family in Puerto Rico, where they run about $19 a carton.

The lucrative business of smuggling cigarettes is a simple scheme that garners huge profits -- and low penalties for arrest and conviction -- and has recently begun to rival drug trafficking as a funding choice for terrorist groups, law enforcement officials have said.

The first large-scale cigarette trafficking case tied to terrorism was prosecuted in North Carolina http://www.cigarettes-planet.com/more_cigarettes.html in 2002. A federal jury in Charlotte convicted Mohamad Hammoud of violating a ban on providing material support to terrorist groups by funneling profits from a multimillion-dollar cigarette-smuggling operation to Hezbollah.

Hammoud, whom prosecutors described as the leader of a terrorist cell, and his brother were found guilty of cigarette smuggling, racketeering and money laundering. The two men were accused of smuggling at least $7.9 million worth of cigarettes out of North Carolina and selling them in Michigan. Hammoud was sentenced to 155 years in prison.

On a smaller scale, theft of cigarettes is nothing new to beat cops. Guilford County sheriff's deputies have responded to seven "smash and grabs" at tobacco shops this year, said Capt. Tom Sheppard. Last year, deputies responded to 23 incidents.

Thieves quickly bust a window, get into a shop and steal cigarettes before an alarm company can call law enforcement, Sheppard said.