高考英语 考前突破阅读理解能力 社会生活 纽约警方破获香烟走私集团素材.docVIP

纽约警方破获香烟走私集团 New York officials say they have busted a multi-million dollar cigarette smuggling ring. 纽约官员称，他们破获一个价值数百万美元的香烟走私集团。 About 20,000 cartons were brought to New York per week by distributors ? Officials allege that three of the 16 Palestinian immigrants charged had links to known terrorists. ? The states attorney general said investigators had recovered only a fraction of the proceeds from sales of more than a million untaxed cartons（纸板盒）. ? The amount of money involved remains unclear, but records show the suspects deposited at least $55m (￡36m). ? The scheme cost the state an estimated $80m in tax revenue, said officials in a press conference on Thursday. ? The alleged ringleaders, brothers Basel and Samir Ramadan, were arrested on Wednesday in Maryland.? ? Investigators said they had found $1.5m in cash - some stashed in black plastic bin bags - in the home and car of Basel Ramadan. ? Astounding profits? ? According to police, the scheme involved buying large quantities of cigarette cartons from a wholesaler in Virginia, hiding them in a public storage building in Delaware and bringing them to New York City and upstate New York for sale at markets and grocery stores.? ? New York City Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said that one of the suspects used to run a business in the 1990s partly funded by Omar Abdel-Rahman, a blind cleric serving a life sentence for a conspiracy to blow up New York City landmarks. ? Another was the confidant, Mr Kelly said, of a Lebanese immigrant convicted of a deadly shooting attack in 1994 on a van full of Jewish students on Brooklyn Bridge.? ? He said a third suspect used to live in the same apartment as the secretary of a key fundraiser for the Palestinian militant group, Hamas. ? Officials have not linked the proceeds of the cigarette sales to any militant fundraising, but said they would keep pursuing the missing money. ? This dangerous criminal ring was able to generate astounding profits that we are still continuing to t