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Bergen authorities charge six in separate cases of shipping untaxed cigarettes north, payments south

YOU READ IT HERE FIRST: A quartet of cases sparked by Fort Lee and Mahwah police produced a series of indictments naming six people for transporting untaxed cigarettes north through New Jersey and the money to buy them back down south, Bergen County Prosecutor John L. Molinelli announced this afternoon.

Photo Credit: Cliffview Pilot File Photo

It began when Fort Lee police stopped a vehicle containing Yousef Khraim, 27, of Ocean City, MD and Mohamed Hasan, 26, of Harlem just south of the George Washington Bridge and found them carrying more than $28,000 apparently destined for a southern state, Molinelli said.

On March 5, 2014, Fort Lee police stopped two Bronx men, Basem Naser-Eddin, 54, and Abdo M. Saidi, 41, in nearly the same area and found them carrying more than $22,000 in their vehicle, the prosecutor said.

All four were charged with what is known as “financial facilitation of criminal activity” in separate indictments returned yesterday by a grand jury in Hackensack.

On Jan. 2 of this year, Mahwah police stopped a northbound vehicle near the New York State border and found 250 assorted cartons of more than 20,000 unstamped cigarettes, Molinelli said.

The driver, 52-year-old Hatim Mohamed of Richmond, VA, was indicted by the grand jury yesterday on two charges of illegally possessing and transporting the contraband, failing to keep books with the intent to evade taxes and “engaging in conduct requiring a registration or license.”

Then, this past March 18, Fort Lee police stopped a vehicle headed to the GWB and arrested the driver, Gamal Alkatteeb, 30, also of Richmond, for having more than 450 cartons of untaxed cigarettes. The fourth grand jury indictment charges him with related offenses.

“The indictments are the result of concerted efforts among several law enforcement agencies to address the pattern of interstate contraband cigarette trafficking activities,” said Molinelli, who thanked Fort Lee and Mahwah police, as well as the state Department of Treasury Division of Taxation’s Office of Criminal Investigation.

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