Multimillion-dollar fake cigarette trafficker did it for love
Fort Lauderdale: A man who admitted he trafficked knock-off cigarettes with a retail value of about $US5.5 million ($7.8 million) to the US via India and Dubai says he did it out of love for his father. The case involved more than 51,500 cartons of counterfeit cigarettes – which prosecutors say often contain dangerous levels of arsenic and other noxious substances – seized from a shipping container in 2014.Gaurav Joseph Jayaseelan, 26, a citizen of India, told the judge he knew what he did was wrong. He said he had been unduly influenced by his love for and subservience to his father, who sent him to the US to unwittingly meet undercover investigators from the US Food and Drug Administration.Jayaseelan, his father, Joseph RayappanJayaseelan, and another man, Pedro Ivan Flores, were indicted in September 2014. He was sentenced on Friday to 16 months in a US federal prison.
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