Cigarette Smugglers Unwitting Anti-Smoking Advocates

türkçe links to original Turkish article

(HaberTürk Newspaper, 17 November 2017)


         Filter cigarettes, minus the cigarette part.

Istanbul anti-smuggling police put a gang that was smuggling cigarettes
to Turkey from Iraq under surveillance and learned that the gang was
bringing 12,500 cartons of cigarettes to Istanbul from Iraq.  The gang
then sold the smuggled cigarettes to another gang in Istanbul for
125,000 TL (about $35K).  Police mounted an operation and caught
the receiving smugglers red-handed.

However, when police opened the cartons they found not cigarettes but
styrofoam and newspapers, placed in the cartons to give them the
expected weight.  The smugglers were as surprised as the police to see
that the 125,000 TL they paid was for naught (!).


Hoodwinked smugglers got t-shirts as compensation.