US: ATF misplaced 420 million cigarettes in stings
Source: AP
WASHINGTON (AP) — Government agents acting without authorization conducted dozens of undercover investigations of illegal tobacco sales, misused some of $162 million in profits from the stings and lost track of at least 420 million cigarettes, the Justice Department's inspector general said Wednesday.
In one case, agents for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives sold $15 million in cigarettes and later turned over $4.9 million in profits from the sales to a confidential informant — even though the agency did not properly account for the transaction.
The ATF's newly-appointed director, B. Todd Jones, said the audit covered only selected, "historical" ATF investigations between 2006 and 2011, and said the agency had tightened its internal guidelines since then.
The audit described widespread lack of ATF oversight and inadequate paperwork in the agency's "churning investigations," undercover operations that use proceeds from illicit cigarette sales to pay for the ATF's costs. The audit came as a new blow to a beleaguered agency still reeling from congressional inquiries into the ATF's flawed handling of the Operation Fast and Furious weapons tracking probes in Mexico.
Read more: http://bigstory.ap.org/article/us-atf-misplaced-420-million-cigarettes-stings
= new reply since forum marked as read
I call for hearings! Holder should resign!
This is a 20-foot container, which is the standard size used to ship cigarettes overseas. (I looked up a cigarette exporter's website.)
Cigarette makers ship their wares in "master cases." Each one holds 50 cartons; there are 200 cigarettes in a carton, so a master case contains 10,000 cigarettes.
The standard container holds 420 master cases, or 4.2 million cigarettes.
The ATF, therefore, lost "at least" 100 shipping containers full of cigarettes.
> The ATF, therefore, lost "at least" 100 shipping containers full of cigarettes.
I think the quotes should definitely be around "lost" rather than "at least" ...
