QUEENS — A Flushing man’s tax fraud went up in smoke when he was found by investigators with more than 200,000 illegal cigarettes in his minivan, the Queens District Attorney’s Office said Thursday.
Baocheng Zhang, 33, was spotted loading nearly two dozen cases of cigarettes into a Toyota Sienna on Bell Boulevard near 42nd Avenue in Bayside on Monday, prosecutors said.
When investigators searched the vehicle, they recovered more than 1,000 cartons of untaxed cigarettes, prosecutors said.
The cigarettes, if sold legally, would have generated more than $70,000 in tax revenue.
“Cigarette smuggling to evade sales taxes is a multimillion dollar industry,” Queens DA Richard Brown said.
“The victims are taxpayers who must dig deeper into their pockets and pay higher taxes because of these kinds of schemes.”
Investigators also recovered a storage unit receipt inside the minivan and later found another 2,100 cartons at a U-Haul facility, prosecutors said.
In all, more than 3,000 cigarette cartons — containing more than 600,000 smokes — were recovered. Their street value totaled more than $250,000, prosecutors said.
Zhang was charged with possessing and transporting illegal cigarettes and grand larceny, according to the DA's Office.
He was released on his own recognizance and is due back in court on Nov. 14.
