From Fast and Furious to "Huff and Puff"?

[CitizenBBN]

Seems the ATF has been running lots of sting operations where they sell cigarettes illegally to catch smugglers.

From 2006 to 2011 the Inspector General found that they made a PROFIT of $162 million dollars, that was used in part to fund other activities. The problem? Just like Fast and Furious it seems a lot of the cigarettes went missing. The IG says 2.1 MILLION CARTONS in fact, or 420 million smokes. The ATF says they did a more detailed audit and the number is just a mere 447,000 cartons, or a mere 90 million or so smokes. Even that is about $127 MILLION worth of cigs just gone missing. Entire semi trailer loads of them. See, it's much better. In one case the ATF made $5.3 million on a sting but the informant kept $4.9 MILLION of the profits, didn't even file expenses as if somehow he had 4.9 mil in costs. lol.

All of this is about "churning", which is not even a cost to the feds. People buy large amounts of smokes in low tax states then take them up north to high tax states and sell them without paying that state's tax. It's all about tax revenue, not selling an illegal product, which btw is what ATF was originally created to do and was part of Treasury.

The IG found that of the 16 investigations he audited not one met their requirements for approval of an operation , and that the committee charged to review and approve such operations didn't even meet between 2005 and 2011. Per the ATF they've since "revised" their procedures. You know, the ones where they apparently lacked any procedural approval for every cigarette operation conducted for more than 5 years and made $160 million while misplacing $127 million worth of cigarettes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/atf-lost-track-of-21-million-cartons-of-cigarettes-in-sting-operations-report-finds/2013/09/25/4bf197e4-2604-11e3-b3e9-d97fb087acd6_story_1.html

[jazyd]

[i don't know whether to laugh or cry


QUOTE=CitizenBBN;111526]Seems the ATF has been running lots of sting operations where they sell cigarettes illegally to catch smugglers.

From 2006 to 2011 the Inspector General found that they made a PROFIT of $162 million dollars, that was used in part to fund other activities. The problem? Just like Fast and Furious it seems a lot of the cigarettes went missing. The IG says 2.1 MILLION CARTONS in fact, or 420 million smokes. The ATF says they did a more detailed audit and the number is just a mere 447,000 cartons, or a mere 90 million or so smokes. Even that is about $127 MILLION worth of cigs just gone missing. Entire semi trailer loads of them. See, it's much better. In one case the ATF made $5.3 million on a sting but the informant kept $4.9 MILLION of the profits, didn't even file expenses as if somehow he had 4.9 mil in costs. lol.

All of this is about "churning", which is not even a cost to the feds. People buy large amounts of smokes in low tax states then take them up north to high tax states and sell them without paying that state's tax. It's all about tax revenue, not selling an illegal product, which btw is what ATF was originally created to do and was part of Treasury.

The IG found that of the 16 investigations he audited not one met their requirements for approval of an operation , and that the committee charged to review and approve such operations didn't even meet between 2005 and 2011. Per the ATF they've since "revised" their procedures. You know, the ones where they apparently lacked any procedural approval for every cigarette operation conducted for more than 5 years and made $160 million while misplacing $127 million worth of cigarettes.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/atf-lost-track-of-21-million-cartons-of-cigarettes-in-sting-operations-report-finds/2013/09/25/4bf197e4-2604-11e3-b3e9-d97fb087acd6_story_1.html[/QUOTE]

[suncat05]

Funny that this should come up...........our Chief Deputy just posted an announcement about authorized off-duty work available to any of us that are law enforcement certified, something to do with tobacco sales that are NOT in our county. I have not checked it out yet, but the first thing that struck me as odd was the contact number posted. The area code is MARYLAND. It also says that this is being run for the government by a private contractor. He gave us an e-mail address too.
Just wondering if this is in any way related to the above mentioned posts?
Now I'm really curious, but skeptical and reluctant to check it out at the same time. Missing cigarettes, with federal tax stamps on them, means to me a federal investigation of some sort, and this makes me less than thrilled to get involved. Again, just wondering if they're in any way related.
If I decide to check, and depending on what I find out, I will let you guys know.

[suncat05]

Chief was adamant in his mention that we could not do any of this work inside our home county, but in surrounding counties. Which brings up this question: our arrest authority is only good in our county, unless we are sworn in as part of some type of 'task force' or given arrest authority by the Sheriff of an adjoining county(some of us do have that authority from other Sheriffs, but it is not liberally handed out; I am one that does have that, as I do go out with State Probation to check on our Drug Court participants that live in adjoining counties).
The area code/phone number in MARYLAND is what has me wondering what exactly this really is.

Do any of you guys read something, and upon initially seeing it think it's a good thing, but after reading it again and then thinking about it some more start to question exactly it is really all about? THIS is one of those for me.

[CitizenBBN]

Does seem kinda odd suncat.

Very little would surprise me with the ATF, and while it could be a more local/state operation and not necessarily be ATF, they have shown a strong pattern of failures that indicates maybe they shouldn't be in the undercover operation business. They seem to mainly lack any discipline to follow their own procedures or have anything reviewed objectively. Fast and Furious wasn't the only gun operation with questionable outcomes, there was a story about a sting up north where they ran a front pawn shop that blew up in their face (along with losing a full auto machine gun), and now this report says the committee that is supposed to approve these kinds of operations didn't even meet between 2005 and 2011 yet the operations continued.

They just seem to have wide discretion at low levels to pursue these operations and no one above them is signing off or if they do they are rubber stamping things. Everything seems very loose, which leads to lots of mistakes.

However, if you could be the guy that ends up with $4.9 million of the $5.3 million in profit it may not be a bad deal. :)

[CitizenBBN]

One thing that's not clear to me is if the ATF actually got back cigarettes used in the stings that made money or if they just sold cigarettes illegally, made money doing it, and pocketed the cash. They obviously lost a lot of cigarettes, but did they also become the biggest illegal cig seller in the Northeast? Sounds crazy but they became the biggest gun runner on the Mexican border, this seems tame by comparison.

For many years, and maybe to this day, the FBI was the largest distributor of child pornography in the US. They did it as part of stings and set ups, but it doesn't change the fact they were catching (and in some cases entrapping) possible child porn consumers by distributing child porn in the US. Like the guns in F&F, the problem is that once you put something like that out there and it's copied you've lost control of it.

Sting operations where you provide the criminal element with guns or drugs or porn or whatever it is seem inherently dangerous to me. They should at least get the highest level of review and scrutiny, which seems to be the opposite of how the ATF operates.

[UKHistory]

The ATF frightens me. First off the name. Why are they named after three products that are legal?

Second, why the Hell do we need them. The abuse of power that government agencies have used in this country since J. Edgar is unnerving.

Our government is better than the nazis and communists, but being not as bad the other guy is hardly a ringing endorsement for the citizens of this nation.

Very troubling.

[jazyd]

Sun at, if it is a contractor they could do the work in adjoining counties but headquarter in Maryland

[jazyd]

[
So very true



QUOTE=UKHistory;112009]The ATF frightens me. First off the name. Why are they named after three products that are legal?

Second, why the Hell do we need them. The abuse of power that government agencies have used in this country since J. Edgar is unnerving.

Our government is better than the nazis and communists, but being not as bad the other guy is hardly a ringing endorsement for the citizens of this nation.

Very troubling.[/QUOTE]