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Comment by jimbob45 | Hacker News Reader

However, the U.S. Attorney's Office of the Northern District of California said from July 2019 onward, officials intercepted and opened five of the shipments

So one shipment a year? It took four years to make a case? I know police cases take time but...this seems less like justice and more like she didn't pay off the right person.

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They don’t really check every package.

> She is alleged to have had at least 61 shipments mailed to her home from October 2015 to January 2023 from countries/regions, including Hong Kong, Hungary, India, and Singapore. The mailing documents were labeled as “Wedding Party Favors,” “Gift Makeup,” or “Chocolate and Sweets.”

TBH, this sounds like most electronic gizmos I order off aliexpress et al.

But I think detailed records are only kept by customs on int’l courier packages, not postal service parcels.

Of course they don't.

I've been a cigar hobbyist since the early 90s. Cuban cigars have been mostly to completely illegal in the US for the entire time, but with the advent of the widespread use of web pages, we started to get better and better access to the Cuban supply via overseas retailers.

These retailers know full good and well that these cigars are contraband here in the states. But some of them were extremely lazy and would just ship entire pallets of merchandise. I'd guess that about 70-80% of the product bought overseas and shipped here actually got to the buyer. The rest were virtually all on these pallets where you'd have to be a complete idiot not to spot them.

I would be astonished if customs even finds it useful to appropriate any budget for seizure of Cuban cigars. It wouldn't surprise me if they let them through because it's less work than filling out the seizure paperwork. Everyone knows it's a measure that achieves nothing, and not even the rabid anti-drug people are going to give them an attaboy for finding tobacco, and the political will to do anything meaningfully further with the embargo is withering.

I know that I've never lost a single item to customs in all the years I was procuring cigars internationally, and most retailers would send out a second shipment if the first was seized for whatever reason. Even the gray market retailers, who would buy in volume from companies with actual Habanos licenses and then sell at a discount to customers would do this. I think you're right and it was only cases where they made it extremely obvious would customs ever do something about it. Of course, it didn't hurt that the elites on both sides of the political aisle enjoyed the product.

Right, but they had intercepted and notified her by mail of seizing kilograms of controlled substances on several previous occasions. She had even written back to acknowledge at least one of the notices and formally abandon her ownership interest in the package.

Opioid dependence is a helluva drug.

There's no indication she was a user of her product. Simple greed seems to be the explanation here.

Why would the DoJ share that someone had a medical problem? People could become sympathetic. Better to focus the public interest on the greed and abuse of office aspects.

I read a lot of legal filings in criminal cases, and while you make a valid point my experience is the feds usually include whatever excuse/explanation people offer when they're caught. Culturally federally investigators more about 'here are the facts and how we collected them to establish probable cause' and leave the moralizing to prosecutors.

Please don't read this as a blanket endorsement or suggestion that federal investigators are always ethical, I don't believe that to be so.

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