http://legalinsurrection.com/2017/09/nyt-report-atfs-secret-bank-account-part-of-widespread-cigarette-scheme/#more-226412
NYT Report: ATF’s Secret Bank Account Part of Widespread Cigarette Scheme
In February, The New York Times reported that agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) established a secret bank fund filled with millions from “a web of shadowy cigarette sales” before it closed in 2013. No one knows for sure how much entered the account because no one tracked it.
New unsealed records revealed to the NYT that the scheme was more than just a few agents. Instead, it grew to “a highly unorthodox merger of an undercover law enforcement operation and a legitimate operation.”
[...]
On March 8, 2013, the warehouse manager called Mr. Thompson. “He started telling me that A.T.F. was doing operations in our warehouse,” Mr. Thompson recalled.
Company lawyers descended on the warehouse, seizing everything. A tobacco company had just raided the A.T.F.
Agents were outraged. They believed the company had no right to search its own warehouse. “I was very, very upset about that,” said William C. Duke, one of the agents involved.
