In February 2015, for example, the affidavit says she called police to say she had been robbed of $37,000 in cash while she was loading cases of cigarettes into her van.

Feinmel said during Fu Chen’s Tuesday court appearance that Henrico police were called in January 2015 to the couple’s Greenwich Drive home in the Wyndham neighborhood for a report of a missing child.

An officer searched the garage to see if the child was hiding there and found more than 4,000 cartons of Virginia-stamped cigarettes, the deputy commonwealth’s attorney said. The couple explained they had the cartons because they owned an Ashland cigarette store. They gave police an address, but when authorities arrived, they found it was merely a storage unit rather than a business selling cigarettes.

Had the case gone to trial, the deputy commonwealth’s attorney said the prosecution would have detailed purchases that Fu Chen made for cigarettes from area Sam’s Clubs using membership cards for the fictitious businesses.

Prior to the January 2015 visit to the Chen home, police investigators from the New York City Sheriff’s Office, the Richmond Police Department and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security were involved in the undercover operation that probed the Chen’s cigarette business, according to the search warrant affidavit.