Source: Los Angeles Times
Contact: letters@latimes.com
Author: ANNEMARIE O'CONNOR, Times Staff Writer

Where There's Smoke
Demand for Cigars Fuels Smuggling of Cuban Contraband

SAN DIEGOThe sweetest forbidden fruit at the border nowadays is not white,
powdery or from Colombia.
And it may not seem like the biggest threat to the Western
world. But U.S. Customs Service officials are all fired up about a
recent surge of the smuggling of Cuban cigars into San Diego.
In recent weeks, there have been backtoback record seizures
at the San Diego border, netting a cache of nearly 5,000 cigars with
an estimated value of $283,500 on the black market, San Diego
customs spokeswoman Bobbie Cassidy said.
The August seizures put San Diego squarely on the map of the
Cuban contraband cigar trail, an exploding black market fueled by
the yuppie cigar craze and a worldwide dictate that Cuba makes the
champagne of puros.
"It's big money," said Rudy Camacho, top U.S. Customs
administrator in San Diego. "It's a new smuggling trend, and it's
indicative of the demand the American consumer has out there."
Nationwide, seizures of Cuban cigars have increased sixfold in
the past three years, to more than $1.1 million worth in fiscal 1996,
according to the Customs Service.
That's a leap from $318,401 in 1995 and a mere $142,014 in
1994, according to the service, which officials say reflects an
increase in black market prices for the cigars as well as in seizures.
"It's the forbidden fruit factor," said Mike Sheehan, spokesman
for customs in Miami, where Cuban cigars have become a status
symbol for the terminally hip of South Beach.
"The fact that it's illegal and difficult to obtain makes it all the
more desirable."
San Diego got its first whiff of the problem Aug. 1, when
customs inspectors at the San Ysidro border crossing found 2,025
cigars in the trunk of a 1972 Oldsmobile driven by Leonard Powell,
33, of Aliso Viejo, according to Assistant U.S. Atty. Bruce Smith,
the prosecutor in the case. The cigarshighend brands such as
Montecristo, Romeo y Julieta, Cohiba Esplendidoswere valued at
$121,500, a customs statement said.
On Aug. 23, customs officials found 2,700 cigars crammed in
the trunk of the 1997 Chevrolet Cavalier driven by John Daniel
Mejia, 26, of Montebello, Smith said. The Customs Service puts
the value of that cache at $162,000.
Smith said both men were accused of failure to declare imported
goods and knowingly possessing smuggled goods. They are to be
arraigned Sept. 16.
If convicted, they could face up to five years in jail and fines of
up to $10,000, he said.
In Miami, a hotbed of opposition to Cuban leader Fidel Castro,
smugglers are sometimes accused of violating the Cuban trade
embargo. That can bring stiffer penaltiesup to 10 years in prison
and $100,000 finesbut defendants often get probation and
financial penalties, customs officials say.
At the heart of Cuban cigar fever is the trendiness of cigars.
In the past few years, cigars have become favored accessories
for the likes of Demi Moore and Arnold Schwarzenegger. They
have inspired the glossy specialty magazine Cigar Aficionado,
whose cover has featured everyone from supermodel Claudia
Schiffer to Castro, the man who made Cuban cigars emblematic.
Cuban handrolleds have a reputation as the best. The image
endures in the face of critics who say the Communist country's
capacity to maintain quality has been hurt by the economic crisis
after the crumbling of the Soviet bloc.
Like Marlboro cigarettes, Cuban cigars have a mystique loaded
with the machismo of a modern hemispheric maverick every bit as
masculine as the cowboyFidel Castro.
The desirability of Cuban cigars is so undisputed that it is a
leitmotif of that ultimate arbitrator of the yuppie zeitgeist, "Seinfeld."
Kramer's love of Cubanos is a running gag.
Even a San Diego federal official admitted that he, too,
sometimes sampled an occasional Havana cigar while in Baja
California.
But the only people allowed to bring Cuban cigars into the
United States are those returning directly from Cuba on a licensed
trip, according to a U.S. Treasury statement. They can bring up to
$100 worth, for personal use, not resale, it said.
The smuggling trend is a new one in San Diego, where Freon,
endangered parrots, snakeseven a Siberian white tigerhave
been found at the border. But there's nothing new about Cuban
cigarsor trips to Cubain Baja California.
South of the border, aromatic counters of Cuban cigars have
become common at tourist hotels, restaurants and stores. There is a
weekly flight from Tijuana to Cuba, with a stopover to pick up
passengers in Monterrey, that U.S. officials suspect brings some of
the black market cigars.
Before the August seizures, customs officials found handfuls of
Cuban cigars three or four times a week in car traffic across the
world's busiest border, San Ysidro, spokesman said.
Customs officials say there is plenty of incentive for U.S.
distributors to discreetly sell them, since highquality Montecristos
can fetch $100 each.
Customs officials say Los Angeles and San Francisco are major
consumer cities, along with New York and Miami. In Southern
California, customs officials believe that more than a few cigar
shops secretly stock Cuban brands. Upscale restaurants and cigar
clubs patronized by wealthy clientele are another suspected source.
But no one is planning a public crackdown, officials say.
"The public should not be concerned that we're out there
investigating every lightup of a Cuban cigar," said Ed Logan, the
special agent in charge of customs investigations along the California
border.
At a time when international drug smuggling is a major concern,
there seems to be a limit to how far law enforcement is willing to go
to protect America from the Cuban cigar threat.
"These are cigars, after all. It's not heroin," said Mike Sheehan,
one of the Customs Service's nationwide experts on the issue.

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