ELM PARK — Police found 1,584 cartons of untaxed cigarettes and bags of the illegal intoxicant cathinone inside a Staten Island home, prosecutors said.
Mousa Elayat, 63, and Zaher Hameed, 23, were arrested after officers found the items inside Elayat's home June 6, according to a criminal complaint.
After an investigation by the District Attorney's NYPD Detective Squad and state's Department of Taxation and Finance, police executed a search warrant at Elayat's Mundy Avenue home at about 5:58 p.m.
They found the cartons of cigarettes — with 317,200 cigarettes inside — without New York State stamps and 12 bags of cathinone inside the home, police said. A stamp would have indicated the state tax had been paid.
Elayat and Hameed were both charged with evading cigarette and tobacco taxes and drug possession at their arraignment, the DA's office said. Their bail was set at $15,000.
Contact information for their lawyers were not available.
