Brooklyn Park man accused of tax evasion over vape shops and deceptive practices at décor business

Investigators noticed the corporate entities that controlled the businesses changed regularly but all were connected to Shocinsky either directly or indirectly. They also found that while all of the businesses were seemingly in retail tobacco sales, they had also obtained a Minnesota tobacco products distributor license.

The companies with those distributor licenses filed their required tobacco tax returns, but after May 2019 they “uniformly reported $0 in tobacco purchases and $0 in tobacco tax owing.” Those are alleged to be false returns.

According to the charges, Shocinsky had been ordering vape products from Demand Vape, a New York based company. Between 2019-2021, Shocinsky or Cloud X Vapes purchased more than $800,000 worth of taxable tobacco products that were shipped to Minnesota or Osceola and later Hudson, Wis., without paying Minnesota tobacco taxes.

Investigators also inspected several of Shocinsky’s stores in 2021 and 2022 and found more than $70,000 worth of untaxed tobacco products.

Investigators spoke with several employees of Cloud X Vapes who said Shocinsky ran the stores. Shocinsky’s stepmother acted as his accountant and prepared tobacco tax returns based on the information he gave her.

When Shocinsky was interviewed by tobacco tax staff members with the Minnesota Department of Revenue, he told them he had paid all of his tobacco taxes. He said that he would send tobacco products shipped to Wisconsin, bring them into Minnesota and pay himself one penny and file a tobacco tax return based on that amount.