Brooklyn court allows summary judgment in case of unstamped cigarette sales
Chief Judge Carol B. Amon of the United States District Court for the Eastern District of New York (Brooklyn federal court) has granted the city’s motion for summary judgment against two wholesale tobacco distributors accused of selling massive quantities of “unstamped” cigarettes on which cigarette taxes had not been pre-paid.
The two distributors’ failure to include the cigarette taxes required by state law in the wholesale cigarette price permitted the cigarettes ultimately to be sold to consumers at illegally reduced prices, according to the city Corporation Counsel’s Office.
The wholesalers’ sales were made to cigarette outlets located on the Poospatuck Reservation in Mastic, N.Y., from where they were bootlegged in large quantities into the city, according to the complaint.