Tobacco Seller Gets 7-Year Sentence for California Tax Evasion

Oct. 5, 2021, 9:24 PM UTC

A tobacco distributor was sentenced Tuesday to seven years in California state prison and ordered to pay $13.5 million in restitution for evading more than $14 million in state excise tax, California Attorney General Rob Bonta said.

Ali Tavaf pleaded guilty in Los Angeles County Superior Court in 2019 to multiple counts of filing a false tax return, Bonta said. His sentence includes a white collar crime enhancement for violations that exceed $500,000. Tavaf’s attorney, Christopher Darden, didn’t respond immediately to a request for comment.

Between April 2012 and September 2017 Tavaf bought about 250 semitrailer truckloads of tobacco from ...

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