Monthly Archives: December 2016

The sale of contraband tobacco continues to grow throughout the world notwithstanding the efforts by a number of concerned governmental and private sector organizations. Arguably the growth would have been considerably greater had not it been for the determined efforts of the aforementioned groups.

Contraband tobacco supports a range of criminal activities ranging from organized crime to terrorism to human trafficking.

JTI (Japanese Tobacco International) has developed a very successful program to address illicit tobacco. More specifically in Azerbaijan it approached the problem head on. Presently contraband constitutes some 13% of the tobacco market which consists of the sale of one billion cigarettes each year.

The European Union will be implementing a European-wide track-and-trace system “to prevent the smuggling and counterfeiting of cigarettes, which costs €10 billion a year. . . .” Under the new system, all tobacco pack are “marked with a unique identifier,” and with a special security stamp, so that the packet can be tracked from the factory to the shop floor.”

The key issue that remains unresolved is whether obstructionists who oppose the existence of the tobacco industry will be allowed to participate in operating the track-and-trace system.

From: American Security Today

By Tammy Waitt

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On Thursday, U.S. District Judge David L. Bunning sentenced Anthony Cosica, 54, of Pinetop, Ariz., to 24 months in federal prison.

Eight other defendants, including three from eastern Kentucky and two from Russia, have already been sentenced, for charges including conspiracy to commit mail fraud, wire fraud and money laundering and violations of the PACT Act.

Read Complete Article

Editor’s Note: Cross-posted from Regulatory Cyber Security/FISMA Focus. For more information on the convergence of counterfeiting, cybercrime and terrorism, see, Cigarette Smuggling and Cyber Security: Low-Tech Crimes Fund High-Tech Threats.

From: Yahoo News

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Editor’s Note: For more information on the terrorist-tobacco trafficking connection, see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here.

From: Lebanese-Forces.com

President-elect Donald Trump staked much of his successful campaign on stopping illegal immigration. Yet the flow of migrants is symptomatic of a much larger danger to U.S. security that is rapidly gathering on our southern doorstep. Across the region, violent drug cartels and Islamic terror networks increasingly cooperate, with the assistance of corrupt political elites. This toxic nexus is fueling both the rising threat of global jihadism and the collapse of law and order across Latin America that is helping drive drugs and people northward into the United States. Developing a strategy to combat this growing risk to the American homeland needs to be a priority of the Trump administration. And one of its primary targets should be Iran’s most deadly proxy, the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah.