As Hawker Yankee Stadium, but his voice is closer to a theatrical whisper, he repeated his step: "Newports. Loosies. Shorts. Longs".
His name is Paco, but on the streets of Harlem he is known simply as "$ 5 man," the nickname for the established network of dealers who sell bootleg cigarettes. His illegal traffic in Newports - $ 5 Pack or the single "loosie" cigarette for 50 cents - can bring him $ 100 or more per day.
Paco will not reveal their names or the source of his Newports, menthol brand widely popular in urban communities. But legal authorities claim that the traces of $ 5 men leads to American Indian reservations in upstate New York, a path they contend is smoothed on the tacit cooperation of some cigarette makers and distributors.
In New York, where state and city excise taxes total $ 4.25 a package, often push retail prices above $ 9, tax-free cigarettes from the reservations fuel is particularly active underground tobacco economy, according to police.
Combined, the city and the state loses more than $ 1 billion a year in tax revenue as a result Bootleg cigarettes distributed through New York's reservations, Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg 'S office said Monday. Losses in the city will only pay the annual salaries and benefits for more than 3000 schools, the mayor said.
With the financial crisis put pressure on the city budget, Bloomberg administration places the blame for most of the lost revenue on the tiny Poospatuck Indian reservation on eastern Long Island. The city filed a civil suit on Monday against eight smoke shops on the reservation. The suit accuses those shops promote illegal trade "structuring and concealing bulk sales, assisting in the packing of vans destined for New York and even make their own supplies in bulk from the reservation."
So far, not a separate civil suit the Bloomberg administration filed in 2006 against seven tobacco wholesalers it accuses of violating federal laws smuggling untaxed cigarettes to reservations.
In accordance with federal and state law, the state has no right to assess taxes as long as cigarettes for Native Americans. But fewer than 20,000 Indians live on reservations, New York. And last year more than 30 million cartons - six billion cigarettes with a retail value of about $ 2 billion - were sold on Indian soil.
According to the State Department of Taxation and Finance, those cigarettes amounted to about one third of all cigarettes sold in the state of New York, where excise taxes on cigarettes are the highest in the country.
The bulk of wholesale shipments to New York reservations last year went to two tribes - Poospatucks on Long Island and the Seneca of western New York.
President of the Seneca Nation, John A. Morris, Senior, declined to comment through a representative. In court papers, the tribe of Seneca claimed that the sale of untaxed cigarettes to non-Indians for personal consumption, are not illegal.
On Tuesday, Harry Wallace, the head Poospatucks, accused in the politicization of this issue in the interest of convenience store owners who object to competition from tribal sales. "Do you have a number of people who use it as a political tool to gain favor with voters, to get political power," says Mr. Wallace.
Philip Morris USA, whose Marlboro brand is widely bootlegged, argued in federal court filings that shipments by one wholesaler reservation Poospatuck went to the addresses of little more than signs on sheds or trees.
Reporter who recently visited the Poospatuck reservation saw a sign for Wolf Pack Smoke Shop on the markets, of which the sign, smoking, Justin, on a tree outside a residential trailer. Passengers on the trailer told a reporter from the property, told her that there was no cigarette store. "It's just a sign on a tree," the woman screamed.
Law enforcement authorities say New York Indians also operate five of the top 10 Internet Web sites sell cheap cigarettes. And they say reservations are the main source of cigarette smuggling for rings, place counterfeit tax stamps on cigarettes and selling them in retail stores as if taxes were paid.
