Attorney Receives Stiff Sentence for Smuggling Cuban Cigars Into United States
A Chicago-area lawyer was sentenced today to more than three years in federal prison for smuggling thousands of Cuban cigars into the U.S. and selling them for a profit. Richard "Mick" Connors, 54, who was found guilty in 2002 of smuggling, trading with the enemy, conspiracy and lying to a passport officer, was also fined $60,000 and placed on three years' probation.
U.S. District Judge Ronald A. Guzman ordered Connors taken into custody immediately, despite a request that he be allowed to attend his daughter's wedding later this month. The judge said the former public defender is too familiar with ways to flee the country.
During the trial, witnesses testified that in the early 1990s, as the cigar fad was building in the United States, Mr. Connors regularly traveled to Cuba via Canada and Mexico, bought cigars at $25 to $60 a box and sold them in the United States for up to $400 a box. He was arrested at the Canadian border in 1996 with 1,150 cigars.
In a bizarre twist in the case, Connors' ex-wife claimed that U.S. Customs agents encouraged her to "get friendlier" with him in order to collect incriminating evidence against her ex-husband. The ex-wife said she threw valuable documents into the trash so the customs agent - who was monitoring the lawyer's garbage - could collect evidence he could not get without a search warrant. Connors has argued that his conviction should be reversed because the actions taken by Customs amounted to an illegal search and seizure.
|posted by Douglas N. Jacobson| Permalink 
