A Westmoreland County man illegally mailed more than 7,000 pounds of fireworks to Hawaii over two years and lied on his income taxes to conceal the payments he received, according to federal agents.
John W. Allan of Jones Mills is the subject of an investigation by the IRS and U.S. postal inspectors, according to a federal search warrant affidavit, although the status of criminal charges remains unclear.
Agents said Allan admitted that he was selling fireworks to customers in Hawaii, where they are illegal, “to make ends meet.”
According to a federal warrant to search his Instagram account, Allan has shipped fireworks through the U.S. mail hundreds of times and filed bogus tax returns to conceal his income for tax years 2020, 2021 and 2022.
Agents obtained three search warrants on June 8 to search mailed packages sent to people in Hawaii. The packages ranged in weight from more than 28 pounds to more than 36 pounds, and all contained fireworks.
Postal inspectors in Hawaii talked to one of the recipients who admitted to ordering the fireworks from Allan in Pennsylvania, who called himself “PAPRYO” on Instagram, where he did a lot of his business. The recipient said he mailed $20,000 to Allan at a post office box in Greensburg for up to 1,000 pounds of fireworks. The post office box was registered to Allan’s wife, Amber.
The recipient also told agents that PAPRYO had said on Instagram that he’d recently bought a house.
Agents in Pittsburgh discovered that Allan bought a house on Old State Highway in May 2022.
Postal inspectors determined that between June 2020 and June 2022, Allan sent at least 254 packages to Hawaii weighing a total of 7,611 pounds.
Agents executed a search warrant of his house in February of this year and said they found lots of fireworks, ledgers and an owe sheet, $26,000 in cash and a gun. Allan isn’t allowed to have any guns because he’s a felon.
During the search, Allan showed up at the house and agreed to talk. He admitted that he’d been buying fireworks from a wholesaler and reselling them in Hawaii because their illegal status there makes his enterprise lucrative.
He said he’d been shipping his packages by mail for four years and lying on the declarations about the contents, according to agents. He said he at first sold them on eBay, but after eBay tightened its fireworks restrictions he moved his business to Instagram and accepted cash payments either by mail or through Venmo and PayPal.
“I know what I was doing was wrong,” he said, “but I was doing it to make ends meet.”
He also admitted that he didn’t tell his tax preparer about his secret income, according to the affidavit.
For tax year 2021, for example, he said his income was about $40,000 from an outfit called C-K Composite Co., but the criminal investigation division of the IRS found $160,479 in deposits into his bank accounts, many sent through Venmo and PayPal. He hid his income from the other years, too, according to investigators.
Torsten covers the courts for the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, but he's currently on strike. Reach him at jtorsteno@gmail.com.
