Ashdod Man Sentenced to Prison for Massive Cigarette Smuggling Scheme
An Ashdod resident was sentenced to 34 months in prison and fined 500,000 shekels for smuggling over 10 million cigarettes from the UAE, evading massive customs taxes.
A resident of Ashdod has been sentenced to 34 months in prison and a one-year suspended sentence for smuggling over 10.4 million cigarettes into Israel, evading approximately 10 million shekels in taxes. Chaim Cohen, 51, orchestrated the elaborate smuggling operation using a container shipped from the United Arab Emirates.
The Smuggling Operation and Tax Evasion
The shipment contained 10,460,000 individual Manchester cigarettes valued at roughly 10.5 million shekels. To avoid paying heavy import duties and taxes, Cohen falsely declared the cargo as plastic wrap products valued at just 78,000 shekels, reducing the tax liability to a mere 13,612 shekels.
To ensure the deception succeeded, Cohen and his accomplices prepared a duplicate container painted identically to the original, complete with matching serial numbers and security seals. The decoy container was loaded with legitimate plastic wrap to fool customs inspectors if intercepted, while the real cigarette container was sneaked out of the port storage facility under the cover of darkness.
Legal Proceedings and Verdict
Customs officials uncovered the scheme shortly after the cigarettes were unloaded and offloaded for black-market distribution. Cohen was arrested following a joint investigation by the Tax Authority and the police, leading to an indictment in the Beersheba District Court.
"Once the defendant admitted to his actions and took responsibility, it established a proper foundation to consider rehabilitation," the late Judge Binyamin Sagi noted during the proceedings.
Following a plea bargain in which Cohen confessed to all charges, he received a 34-month prison term, a one-year suspended sentence, and a hefty fine of 500,000 shekels. The trial spanned nearly three years, during which medical evaluations addressed claims regarding Cohen's mental health status.
