A Cake Filled With Cigarettes: Lithuanian Customs Reveals Unusual Smuggling Methods

Reform.news Editorial Team · 6 November 2026, 10:33

https://reform.news/en/a-cake-filled-with-cigarettes-lithuanian-customs-reveals-unusual-smuggling-methods/

The Lithuanian Customs press service has published a selection of archival cases involving baked goods. It also features cigarette smuggling from Belarus.

In February 2015, Lithuanian customs officers found a bag containing bread under the seats of a Voronava–Šalčininkai bus. The bread turned out to have a filling: loaves contained Premjer and 99 cigarettes. The owner of the bag could not be identified at the time.

In October 2016, a Belarusian woman was travelling through the Medininkai checkpoint with a pink cake. She said she was taking it to a friend. The cake seemed unusually light to customs officers. Their suspicions were confirmed: 190 packs of Queen cigarettes had been concealed beneath the pink icing.

In July 2021, a truck carrying wafer cakes from Moscow to the Kaliningrad Region was stopped at the same Medininkai checkpoint. Customs officers became suspicious because the confectionery was being transported in hot weather in a standard semi-trailer rather than an insulated or refrigerated one. An inspection revealed that there were no cakes in the boxes. Instead, they contained Minsk Capital MS cigarettes — a total of 414,000 packs worth €1.45 million.