NEW YORK: A U-Haul driver was caught trying to smuggle $10,000 in illegal cigarettes into Queens on Sunday, law-enforcement sources said.
The stash was hidden in moving boxes, sources said.
Bridge and Tunnel cops stopped the van’s driver, Kofi Amankwah, 27, at a checkpoint at the Manhattan entrance to the Queens Midtown Tunnel and discovered the 600 cartons of Newport cigarettes from Virginia.
Amankwah allegedly told the officers he didn’t know the contents of the nearly dozen moving boxes and that he had transported them from Maryland.
But when officers inspected the truck’s cargo, they found that the cartons were marked with a tax stamp from Virginia, where cigarettes cost three to four times less than New York, sources said.
Amankwah was charged with felony possession with the intent to sell untaxed cigarettes.
