That still goes on. It is an east-coast racket mostly - mostly Italian Mafia. 

They either do heists on transport before the items are marked with tax stamps, have people inside who provide the product before it has been tax stamped, or buy in low tax areas and transport to high tax areas. 

The profits are not large enough, the fines are too heavy, the supply too small and difficult to acquire and the risk it too big to make it a *significant* portion of their economy - especially today - and especially competing against counterfeits from Asia. 

Even black markets have to compete with one another and innovate and adapt to changing landscapes. ;) 

Wed May 05 2021 09:01:13 EDT from darknetuser

These ones were just cigarettes produced in legit factories that they managed to sneak out bribing the owner or something of that sort.

They then proceeded to sell them to distribution channels as if they were regular taxed cigaretes and put the difference in their pockets.

They also moved them from low tax regions in a certain country to high tax regions of the same country to maximize profits.

As you can imagine, it was not bound to last, but much money to be made while it lasted :P

Most organized crime is managed BY politicians and other political leaders at this point. 

Even the Godfather acknowledges this - with politicians who want to "wet their beak". 

Wed May 05 2021 13:47:40 EDT from IGnatius T Foobar

Organized crime? Yeah, the government *hates* competition.

So listening to some report on the pipeline hack.. 

1 - they paid the ransom ( not new news ) which of course just incentives the next round.

2 - the control network was air gapped and was not hacked  ( i was going on about this myself, how in the hell did they do something so stupid.. i guess they didnt ) 

3 - the billing system was hacked, so they shut down the flow as they would not be able to bill people.

wtf.

Wed May 19 2021 04:32:18 AM EDT from darknetuser

Which pipeline hack?

Colonial Pipeline

https://www.cnbc.com/2021/05/13/colonial-pipeline-paid-ransom-to-hackers-source-says.html

I guess technically its not even a "pipeline hack" after hearing these bits of info. Media spin to scare people and beg for the "government to come in and save us".

It was a simple corporate system hack. Common place. NOT the end of world.  A pain in the ass annoyance, while you restore servers from backups and reload workstations.

lol

But, was it a GREEN SUV? 

Sat Jan 22 2022 15:16:48 EST from IGnatius T Foobar

So the latest news is about a man named Arnold Schwarzenegger, a person known for, among other things, being a vocal advocate for strong action on climate change.

He was involved in an automobine accident in which his SUV crushed a Prius.

Can't make this stuff up...

Im sort of disappointed, it was just a regular commodity vehicle, not an H1..

but at least it was a US car i guess.