Man Sentenced In Norwood Tobacco Trafficking Case

BOSTON, MA — A Pennsylvania wholesale tobacco distributor who helped a Norwood-based wholesaler ship untaxed tobacco products into Massachusetts will spend a year and a day in prison.

Kamlesh Patel, 60, was also sentenced in U.S. District Court in Boston to two years of supervised release and ordered to pay fine of $500,000 and forfeiture of $153,846. In September 2017, Patel pleaded guilty to one count of aiding and abetting a Norwood-based wholesaler to violate the Prevent All Cigarette Trafficking Act (PACT Act) and one count of failing to report large cash transactions to the IRS, according to the U.S. Attorney's office.

Patel owned and operated RDK Distributors (RDK) and MV Distributors (MV) in Stroudsburg, Penn., through which he distributed wholesale quantities of cigars, smoking tobacco and smokeless tobacco (such as snuff and chewing tobacco), among other products.

Beginning in approximately January 2013, Patel sold large quantities of tobacco products to a Norwood wholesaler, often worth more than $100,000 at a time. The Norwood wholesaler typically paid Patel for the tobacco products in cash. To evade financial reporting requirements that would have notified the IRS of the size, nature and income of the Norwood wholesaler’s business, Patel falsely divided the bulk cash payments he received among multiple invoices. Patel created and instructed his employees to record the large cash payments he received as if there had been numerous sales over numerous days among numerous companies, each less than $10,000, rather than the single sale for which he had received one or two sizeable cash payments, often amounting to more than $100,000 at a time.

Title 15 of the PACT Act requires people who sell, advertise for sale, transfer or ship for profit smokeless tobacco between states to file a statement with the Attorney General and the tobacco tax administrator in the states to which they ship their products. The PACT Act also requires them to file with the tax administrator a monthly record of each shipment of smokeless tobacco that they transport into the state.

Information in this article was provided by the U.S. Attorney's office.

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