There just isn't enough merchandise to go around. And because retailers can lose their licenses for dealing in contraband, most agree that it would be economic suicide even to try--especially with sales of legal cigars up as much as 30 percent see "Rolling Along," page With so few Cuban cigars available and demand riding an upward trend, some Americans violate both travel and trade restrictions to buy Havanas.

And occasionally, things get a little scary even before the cigars leave Havana. A Hollywood star, he had been courted like a prince. Every woman wanted to meet him and wherever he went, people gave him boxes of cigars.

Leaving the country was disconcerting to Fauci, if only because he would eventually have to arrange to get 42 boxes of cigars 20 of which had been gifts back to his California home. However, Fauci, like most illegal travelers to Cuba, was flying via a third country--one that doesn't have any trade or travel restrictions with the island nation.

As he checked his baggage at Varadero airport, a small international hub west of Havana, trouble began. Fauci unaware that Cuba allows only seven boxes of cigars per tourist was asked to produce receipts for his Cuban purchases, but he didn't have receipts for the 20 gift boxes of cigars.

It was stiflingly hot and dark in there, and there were five guys with machine guns. It was like a scene out of Midnight Express. Fauci's friend started to make a scene. He was in this movie Eventually, Fauci explained, one officer walked out from the group and said that although Fauci was obviously a very gracious man, there was a problem.

All the men just stood there for a few seconds. Then Fauci's friend calmly asked the officer, "what will it take to make this problem go away? Fauci and his cigars made it to Hollywood in one piece. Smuggling stories vary in drama. A student at a large Eastern university smuggled cigars back from Norway in his socks.

A New York banker has his buddy, an internationally renowned cellist, bring ci-gars back from abroad in his instrument case. One man, who distributes toys worldwide, travels to Europe on a regular basis. I declare the toys as samples, so there isn't a duty since they originated here anyway. And one time I'm bringing back H. Upmanns for my father-in-law and I get this young buck who's going to do everything by the book.

He wanted to open the case, so I asked to speak to his supervisor. Once the toy dealer was alone with the young Customs official's supervisor, an older gentleman, he asked the man for the name of his favorite Scotch. The Scotch was delivered by noon that same day. Still, even successful smugglers would like to see the embargo eliminated. But questions remain about how, and if, the ban will end.

Lifting the prohibition on travel would be rather simple. According to Congressional revisions to TWEA passed in and "grandfathered" each year since on September 14, the president must find that the embargo is "in the national interest of the United States.

Michael Krinsky, an attorney who specializes in Cuban affairs and business dealings with embargoed countries says, "it's an utterly meaningless standard. The Congress recognized that in , but the Cuban issue was too hot to handle. The world has changed, and the cold war is over. No one can suggest that Cuba is a threat to our security or economy now.

State Department officials say that the laws won't change overnight. One expert, who spoke on condition of anonymity, says, "it won't be solved with the stroke of a pen. Since it turned out they were both from the northern California area, they exchanged numbers and agreed to keep in touch. A month later he rang up Hybl to shoot the breeze and to see how Hybl made out in Cuba. Hybl said he and a friend were already packing up for another run to Havana. It was pure, pure business.

According to seized documents, Hybl's markup ranged from about to percent on high-priced Cohiba Esplendidos to around percent on Fonseca No. If that kind of markup makes you cringe, then Hybl's alleged sale of counterfeits at an even higher margin should convince his lawyer to keep cigar lovers off the jury.

In a lengthy affidavit on Hybl's operation, Bill provided the details of what a Customs agent calls its "first big ongoing kind of conspiracy" cigar prosecution in history. One of Hybl's partners, a Mexican with U.

According to the affadavit, Hybl and Abrego packed seven or eight close friends like rented mules and put them on short flights to Mexico. Hybl explained to Bill that he and Abrego learned how to push the Cuban limits with a few bucks to the border guards. Bringing cigars into Mexico worked much the same way.

Mexico limits the import of cigars for personal use to only one box per person. Abrego claimed that contacts with Mexican senators and other politicians helped grease the wheels. Once on his home turf, goes the story, Abrego or an associate would drive the cigars overland to a safe house--a Roman Catholic church in Tijuana. His connection was a priest who appears to have understood the meditative qualities of a good smoke.

The priest allowed Abrego to put the goods in his rectory for an undisclosed consideration. But the real key to the operation was getting the stuff across the U. Smugglers know that the heavy cross-border traffic in Tijuana makes it impossible for Customs to inspect each vehicle thoroughly. According to the affidavit, Hybl bragged he'd only lost three boxes out of a thousand. In the fall of , Hybl reportedly told Bill that his cigar business was booming and his list of customers was growing.

Among them were high-end tobacconists in Las Vegas and the San Francisco Bay area, a major hotel in Vegas, a private cigar club in Beverly Hills and a fancy five-star restaurant around San Francisco.

New customers were taking UPS shipments all the time. Hybl could go door-to-door to top-of-the-line places all over the West Coast, name a price, and they'd pay it. No haggling. Their forbidden nature, high quality and scarcity push prices to the ceiling. Market growth doesn't appear to be slowing.

Shortly after the enactment of Helms-Burton, "there was a price revolution right before my eyes," Bill says. Assistant U. Heeger has been a criminal investigator with Customs since He's worked on investigations of importation, production and distribution of child pornography, illegal eavesdropping equipment, narcotics and weapons, and on money laundering cases. After the Helms-Burton Act, Treasury instructed Heeger to bone up on Cuban cigar smuggling, he says, so he read back issues of Cigar Aficionado very closely.

Then he started hanging around the cigar haunts of Sacramento and the Bay Area looking for someone with a steady supply of Habanos. It may have been at one of these establishments that Heeger came into contact with one of Bill's business clients. Heeger asked the client to get Bill to buy 15 boxes of Cubanos from Hybl, and Bill obliged. Bill figured that providing the cigars would stop that particular client from continually bumming smokes from Bill's own private stock.

I'll get them to you. On Nov. Bill loaded the 15 boxes into the trunk of his car and wished Hybl well. When Bill got them home, he called the client to tell him he could get them anytime. He might as well have been signing his own search warrant.

The next day was a workday. On the drive home, Bill opened his car windows and lit up an Esplendido. It'll be a long time before he lights another. As his family was sitting down to dinner that evening, there was a knock on the door.

Bill opened it to a half dozen men in street clothes and Customs raid jackets with 9mm automatics drawn. Heeger, five Customs agents and Griffin walked in. Asked about the heat, Heeger is defensive. You've got to take precautions. You never know what's awaiting you on the other side.

What awaited was Bill's own stash of about 20 boxes of mostly Cuban cigars, nicely arranged, and also the boxes he bought from Hybl. His private collection would not have induced Customs to carry out such a bust, says Heeger. But Bill's "involvement with Joe [Hybl] took it to new levels. Bill was not a doper," Heeger explains. Nor did he sell contraband cigars to make his living. As a result, Heeger says Customs treated him with "kid gloves. By the time the Feds got finished hauling out his prized humidors, his Cohiba paraphernalia, his Cuban ashtrays and every cigar in his suburban home, Bill knew his life would never be the same.

The Feds then made him an offer he couldn't refuse: become a government informant against your friends or we'll ruin your life. Heeger and Griffin sat Bill down with his lawyer and explained what he'd have to do to avoid felony charges. Bill would have to wear a wire, record telephone calls and get Joe Hybl to spill his guts about the scope and nature of the alleged conspiracy.

He'd have to introduce Hybl to a Customs undercover agent. Then, once the government had enough on Hybl and company, Bill would have to testify against them in open court. But the law under which the case is being prosecuted is ripe for constitutional challenge. The elements of the trade embargo that prevent Americans from spending money in and traveling to Cuba were narrowly upheld by the Supreme Court on national security grounds in , says Columbia University professor Peter Kornbluh, director of the Cuban Documentation Project at the National Security Archives in Washington, D.

Yet the Bush and Clinton administrations have not prosecuted those who have traveled to Cuba since, perhaps to keep the law out of the Supreme Court for fear the embargo might be overturned. Some attorneys think it can be overturned. Ironically, two decades into the embargo, then-President Fidel Castro, for health reasons, quit smoking cigars.

Prices could rise dramatically if this small step leads to full trade normalization and commercial import of Cuban cigars. In that case, "the demand for cigars from Americans will rapidly outstrip supply, and as a result, prices would likely increase," said Mitchell Orchant, managing director for C. Gars in London. Among other moves to normalize trade, the United States will let telecommunication providers do business in Cuba.

Travelers will find it easier to make trips to Cuba on more commercial flights from the USA. Allowable travel includes family visits, professional meetings and trips involving "support for the Cuban people.