Word: bootlegging
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...greatest status symbols is heavy drinking. Booze is strictly prohibited in Saudi Arabia, but vast numbers spend their new riches on getting smashed every day. This is a sign of great wealth, since bootleg Scotch sells for $120 a bottle. One Saudi businessman risked penalties by importing his whisky disguised as crated furniture. One day a worried customs official called him from the airport. "You'd better come and pick up your crate of furniture quickly," he warned. "It's leaking...
...Camaro, brand-new 454 modified stock engine they came out with that year, Holly carbs, and Elvin in a '68 Mach I, special Ford 427 four-speed, a quick rear end, a 3.97 I think. Both cars had huge tires wrapped around Cragar mags, jacked-up front-and-rear. Bootleg cars, the epitome of American technology devoted, as it so often is, to breaking the law. And because I was just as drunk as they were, and very nearly as foolish, I stood out between them with my arms raised, and their headlights illuminated me like a Christian idol...
...That defense was overruled by the great Lawgiver, and [it] has never since availed." Well, hardly ever. The defense was recognized for the first time in a federal court in 1915. In two later cases-involving a police agent in 1932 who begged an acquaintance for some bootleg liquor and a paid informer in 1958 who led a reformed addict back to drugs and then got him arrested for dealing-the Supreme Court drew a line "between the trap for the unwary innocent and the trap for the unwary criminal...
...economics are elementary: buy cigarettes in a low-tax state like North Carolina (2? tax per package), bootleg them to a high-tax state like New York (as much as 23? per package) and count the profits. This year, buttleggers should gross some $500 million, most of it pocketed by organized criminals. Concerned tax agents from eight government units (the states of Pennsylvania, New York, Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia, plus New York City) guess they are losing up to $300 million annually in revenues through interstate smuggling...
...Defensive Driving, joining previous trainees from Ghana, Guatemala, Mexico and the Philippines. In a week of schooling they were taught a number of evasive tactics that had been developed, in racier days, by whisky runners and bank heisters. The curriculum consisted of running a roadblock and executing a "bootleg turn," an intricate maneuver of locking on the emergency brake while spinning the steering wheel to excecute a 180° turn within a two-lane road. The bootleg is not recommended for amateurs, but it may be one way for the skilled driver to get away from kidnapers or terrorists...