Posted on 09/26/2013 3:45:37 AM PDT by fruser1
WASHINGTON Government agents acting without authorization conducted dozens of undercover investigations of illegal tobacco sales, misused some of $162 million in profits from the stings and lost track of at least 420 million cigarettes, the Justice Department's inspector general said Wednesday.
In one case, agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sold $15 million in cigarettes and later turned over $4.9 million in profits from the sales to a confidential informant even though the agency did not properly account for the transaction.
The audit described widespread lack of ATF oversight and inadequate paperwork in the agency's "churning investigations," undercover operations that use proceeds from illicit cigarette sales to pay for the ATF's costs.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
I'm more and more convinced that the government itself is violating RICO statutes.
Oh, I forgot, the law doesn't apply to the ruling class.
Sounds like the crooks at the ATF needed to make some extra cash after selling guns to the Mexican drug cartels. There are so many criminals in our government agencies now that we can’t prosecute them all.
So if I profit from selling un-taxed cigarettes I’m a criminal but if the ATF does that’s a good thing?
A tiny example of the corruption and incompetence of the Feds. I can't wait 'til they "fix" the healthcare system.
How much you want to bet they were all Newports?
“F Troop”? Naw, they wouldn’t. Yep, Still FUBAR Keystone Fosdicks.
I’m not a math major, but 420 million cigarettes is about 2.1 million cartons. What kind of storage facility does one need to hide 2.1 million cartons?
Paging Axel Foley.
Fast and Furious II: Smokey and the Bunglers
Kools and Belairs
Agent Ness: “Rico, spot me a smoke.”
Agent Rico: “I don’t got any, boss.”
Agent Ness: “Wait a second. We confiscated 420 million of them just last week!”
Agent Rico: “I thought you had them.”
....elect a street organizer from Chicago who’s political career is shady at best, add the constant corruption and incompetence of DC to expect things not to lead to crime is foolish. The s*** rolls down from the top, in the current form, it’s being thrown. We all saw it from the very beginning, how he handled and extorted BP (20 BILLION)...to the take over of GM and the thief of investments...if anything it has gotten much worst.
Did they look between the cushions of their couch?
(”misplaced” - yeah, right)
Lost track of them hell! They sold them!
They aren’t hidden they are gone.
Fast and Furious with cigarettes by the same criminals working there.
It’s ok though I am sure this will be investigated.
Right after hell freezes over.
You only have to store your wares a little at a time as they come in until you sell them.
graft corruption
our government stinks at every level
Wow, didn't see that one coming.
< /SARC>
There are 12 cartons to a case. That's 175,000 cases.
Each case is about 2' by 2' by 2.5' (10 cu ft).
Total volume for 175,000 cases would be 1,750,000 cu ft.
The standard 40' intermodal shipping container holds about 2380 cu ft.
Thus you would need at least 735 semis filled to the brim with cigarettes to "misplace" 420 million cigarettes.
That's not a lot of 18-wheelers, is it? That's barely more than 2 per day. We cannot expect one department in our government to not "misplace" 2 whole semis of goods on a daily basis. /sarc>
(Now multiply that times the number of departments in our massive government, and...)
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