KEW GARDENS — An Ozone Park man’s alleged unwitting delivery of untaxed cigarettes to a newsstand across the street from the Queens district attorney’s office led to his arrest in an $800,000 counterfeit tax scheme, the DA said.
Queens District Attorney Richard Brown announced an investigator noticed Jose Urena carrying a bag of cigarette cartons without valid New York tax stamps to a newsstand near the DA’s Kew Gardens office April 17.
The DA’s team said it subsequently found 41 cartons — or 410 packs of cigarettes — without the required stamp indicating $6.66 in city and state taxes were paid on the smokes. Some had counterfeit stamps, the DA said.
After acquiring a search warrant, investigators found more than 120,000 fake state and city tax stamps in Urena’s home, the DA said. He estimated the fake stamps could have amounted to close to $800,000 in missed tax revenue.
“Cigarette smuggling to evade state and local taxes is a multimillion-dollar industry,” Brown said in a statement. “However, it cheats taxpayers who must dip into their pockets to pay higher taxes. And it cheats the government as well by fueling an underground economy which does not pay much-needed state and city taxes.”
Urena was charged with first-degree criminal possession of a forged instrument, criminal possession of forgery devices, seventh-degree criminal possession of a controlled substance and violating the state tax law, according to the DA.
He had not been assigned a defense attorney as of press time.
