29 Million Cigarettes

An Indian in St. Louis has been charged with smuggling nearly 29 million cigarettes from Missouri to Illinois to profit from differences in their sales tax rates.

Ghalib Shahjamaluddin, 43, is charged with paying an undercover investigator $4.3 million for moving 144,000 cartons of contraband cigarettes from Missouri — which has the nation’s lowest cigarette tax of just 17 cents a pack — to Chicago, where the tax is six times higher at 98 cents, thereby profiting from the tax differences.