Hecho en Miami

Bello was to stay in Honduras as the manager. Almost immediately the place went to hell. Penton claims he was swindled by Bello, who pretended to know the business. "The factory didn't produce anything; the tobacco was no good," Penton says disgustedly. "[Bello] didn't do anything."

Penton keeps the files relating to the venture — moldy from Hurricane Wilma — stacked inside a small plastic tub in the back of his house. Peeling them apart, newly angry at each sheet, he finally locates the Bello papers. They are receipts, mostly, from credit card transactions and plane tickets in Bello's name. One piece of paper — which he produces triumphantly — appears to be a summons from a Dominican court, ordering Bello to appear on charges relating to Penton. Nothing came of the suit, says Penton, who claims to have lost his entire investment. (Bello, before escorting New Times from his shop, refused to comment on specifics, offering only a few vague epithets about Penton).

Things only got worse from there.

In spring 2005 a machine in his Hialeah warehouse caught fire, and then a few months later, Hurricane Wilma damaged the warehouse ceiling, threatening to ruin some 50,000 cigars he had inside, the last remnant of his failed Dominican venture. Penton was eager to sell them any way he could.

Then one day in September, he was visited by two men who insisted on buying completos, that is, boxes filled with cigars.

Penton hesitated — he says he had only sold empty boxes before — but then one of the men, Leo Gutierrez, said that he was interested in purchasing the entire stock of tobacco. Penton sold them 60 completos, in return for $500 and a promise to buy the rest of his cigars in bundles. A month later Gutierrez returned and purchased 90 more boxes — empty this time — ten each of every brand Penton had available, promising again to return for the cigars. He never came back.

Penton insists — passionately — that his business was neither dishonest nor illegal. "Everything was in the open; my shop was open to the public — I had nothing to hide because I wasn't breaking any law," he says hotly. "Cuba owns no patents in the U.S.A. — everybody knows there's an embargo!" He also poo-poos the idea that he was deceiving anyone."Of course the customers knew the cigars weren't Cuban," he says. "I took them into my warehouse where I was making them!"

Reel Smokers Cigar Distribution, nestled in a strip mall on Federal Highway, is easy to miss. A small sign reading "Cigars" staked into the grass by the sidewalk points the store out to drivers who might otherwise pass it. But inside are hundreds of brands of premium cigars. There are entire aisles given over to particular makers like Padron, Trinidad, and Fonseca. One shelf is dedicated to Reel's own mark — Cuba Classics — which are produced in the shop by an in-house, leather-skinned rolero who conspicuously holds court near the cash register.

The shop is a cigar-lover's paradise; for a spell it was co-owned by Leo Gutierrez. "He was my boss for, um, two or three years," explains an employee, lighting a cigarette in the backroom. "He was charming, everybody liked him, but then he got booted out. I guess he did something crazy ... he had no money. They took the house, they took the cars, his wife was selling her jewelry, stuff like that. He even came in once trying to sell jewelry."

Indeed Leonardo Gutierrez is as perplexing a character in real life as any in fiction. In 1992, at a 7-Eleven on Hillsboro Boulevard in Deerfield Beach, he bought a lottery ticket that netted him $15.4 million. How he spent the money is unclear, but within five years he would appear to be broke. Court records show he has been sued at least nine times in Broward County since 1997, mostly for unpaid debts.

Four of the lawsuits came in 2002. In February of that year Greenwich Consulting, Inc., a Weston company, went after him for $17,500. Gutierrez countersued, alleging that GCI had swindled him by convincing him to hand over $90,000 in a tobacco venture. (Gutierrez later dropped that suit, and the two parties settled.) In May Wachovia Bank was allowed to seize his cars — a '92 Lexus and a '94 Volvo — for $12,380 of debt. And in July Citibank demanded $6474.09 for unpaid credit card debt. No judgment was entered.

The biggest hit, though, came in October, when Altadis USA sued Tabacalera Cubana Corp., a business Gutierrez co-owned with a Miami tabacalero named Pedro Gomez and his sons, Edel and Joel. The company specialized in boxes that resembled their Cuban counterparts, but said "replica" on the bottom. On November 11, 2003, U.S. District Judge Ursula Ungaro ordered the Gomezes to pay Altadis $900,000.

But Gutierrez was required to fork out nothing. Instead he became a snitch for Altadis, detailing the business operations of his partners.

The case was only part of Altadis' offensive against counterfeiters. Around the time they were facing the Gomezes and Gutierrez in court, they sued another company — South Beach Cigar, and won $2 million in damages.

Recently, Altadis worked with the Broward Sherriff's Office to sting Fort Lauderdale Smoke Cafe owner James Joiner and Carolina Cigar Company clerk Allen Boyd for counterfeiting. Joiner's case goes to trial in June. Allen Boyd pled no contest and paid a fine of $1500 plus lawyers' fees. Neither Carolina Cigar nor its owner, Charles McFarland, were charged, but McFarland says he's thinking about suing Altadis.