The Blotter

Last guilty plea in murder-for-hire,

cigarette smuggling scheme

A 32-year-old Fairfax County man has pleaded guilty to hiring a hit man to kill a member of his massive cigarette smuggling ring whom he believed had stolen smokes from a storage facility in Stafford County.

Xing Xiao was the last of the 14 members of the smuggling ring to plead guilty. Authorities say the group bought 77 million cigarettes from undercover agents in Virginia and took them to New York, where they resold them without paying the difference in state and local taxes.