Operation Smokescreen
North Carolina s tax on cigarettes was five cents, whereas it was seventy-five cents in Michigan at the time. The Iredell County Sheriff s Office signed a memorandum of understanding with the Charlotte ATF, permitting the formal collaboration between the two agencies. bank scams, bribery, credit card fraud, immigration fraud, identity theft, tax evasion, and money laundering, .The case brought against the cell included copyright violations, cigarette tax violations, counterfeit violations.. Fromme notified John Lorick, of the Charlotte ATF.
Department of State s Diplomatic Security Service (DSS). Detective Sergeant Robert Fromme made repeated observations of a group of men purchasing large quantities of cigarettes, often with $20,000 - $30,000 in cash. The joint counterterrorism operation ended the fundraising operation, resulting in the arrest, trial, and conviction of the cell members.
Additional federal agencies were assigned to the case, including the Defense Security Service, and Immigration and Naturalization_Service. The operation led to the creation of the North Carolina Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF). Hezbollah cell leader Mohamad Youssef Hammoud was denied a travel visa by the US embassy in Syria, after which he traveled to Venezuela. Detective Fromme continued to monitor the purchases for several months, and determined cell members were transporting the cigarette cartons across state lines, in violation of federal laws.
Each of the four men Fromme was watching purchased 299 cartons of cigarettes, the legal limit permitted without filing legal paperwork. The FBI, which had already been wiretapping communications of two of the cell members, apparently without the knowledge of local law enforcement, also participated in the joint operations. The assembled joint task force penetrated the Hezbollah cell, developing more than ten informants from within the group, as well as from a pool of witnesses.
As a result, Detective Fromme was officially reassigned to the ATF. The operation involved the Sheriff s Office in Iredell County, North Carolina, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (BATF), Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS), and the U.S.
ATF officials informed Fromme that cigarette trafficking was likely an attempt to sell the merchandise for as much as twice the price in states such as Michigan, New York, and Pennsylvania - which had considerably higher taxes on tobacco. Informants were gleaned from cell staff members, including drivers, smugglers, and even spouses. Hezbollah members from the Charlotte cell were arrested, tried, and convicted in a federal court in Charlotte, North Carolina.
Operation Smokescreen was an interagency counterterrorist operation to disrupt fundraising by Hezbollah, that took place in early 1995, ending in 2002. Cigarettes were moved from North Carolina to Tennessee and Virginia.
