OTTAWA — Tobacco smugglers are using creative new ways to avoid detection from Canadian Border Services Agency officers.
RCMP Sgt. Michael Harvey says an increasing number of tobacco smugglers are modifying their vehicles to hide contraband.
By removing the side panels and flatbed panels of a pick-up truck, smugglers hide tobacco in the hollow compartments and then put the panels back in place, he says.
Harvey says he’s noticed an increase in tobacco smugglers modifying vehicles since Jul. 13, 2009, the day CBSA moved their port of entry from Akwesasne to the City of Cornwall.
Before Jul. 13, Harvey says hundreds of vehicles a day could load up with tobacco on the New York side of Akwesasne, where the tobacco is produced, and then drive into Canada with little hassle because the roadway was north of the customs port of entry.
Now that the port of entry has been moved to Cornwall however, all vehicles coming from Cornwall Island have to go through inspection. Harvey says this change has forced smugglers to adapt, by either trying to smuggle contraband tobacco across the St. Lawrence River or trying to do the same at the port of entry.
“The ones that do try to get by customs, they are modifying the vehicles so that in plain view, the officers can’t see the cigarettes, they would have to inspect further,” said Harvey.
Five of the 13 seizures made from Jan. 4 to Jan. 11 involved vehicles that had been modified to hide tobacco.
During that same time, 5,250 re-sealable bags of contraband cigarettes, 700 cartons of little cigars, 1,094 kilograms of fine cut tobacco, 6 vehicles and fifteen people were arrested by the Cornwall RCMP Detachment.