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

A Brooklyn Park man with several metal décor and tobacco vaping businesses is facing a state lawsuit and 28 felony counts in Hennepin County District Court after he allegedly failed to deliver $900,000 in products to consumers and did not pay more than $760,000 in Minnesota tobacco taxes.

The Hennepin County Attorney’s Office on Thursday charged William Shocinski Jr., 29, with 28 felonies related to the filing of false tobacco tax returns and possession and transportation of untaxed tobacco products.

The Minnesota Attorney General’s Office filed its lawsuit Tuesday, alleging Shocinski violated state consumer protection laws and engaged in fraudulent and deceptive business practices when he failed to deliver nearly $900,000 in products to consumers and claimed his businesses helped support youth charities it never donated to.

The lawsuit seeks to stop him and his metal businesses, which are registered in Ham Lake, Brooklyn Park and North Branch, from selling products in Minnesota and to pay restitution to consumers.

“It’s simple: When you order a product from a legitimate business online, you should receive that product ... and his lying about supporting a charity for kids is just plain reprehensible,” Attorney General Keith Ellison said in a statement.

The next hearing in the case is Oct. 28. When reached Thursday, a Minneapolis attorney listed as representing Shocinski and his businesses declined to comment.

According to the complaint, the companies — Meraki Metal Art LLC, VO Metal Center MN LLC, VO Metal Art LLC and VO Metal Art MN LLC — collected $878,769 from 2021 to 2023 for products theynever delivered. Shocinski testified in a deposition that he didn’t deliver about 2,000 products. More than 50 consumers contacted the state to complain.

Assistant Attorney General Noah Lewellen alleged in the complaint that Shocinski and his companies advertised that its orders helped youth charities, including a Texas charity. Instead, Lewellen wrote, Shocinski didn’t donate to charities and lifted the majority of his website content from a Texas competitor.

The Attorney General’s Office alleges that Shocinski opened businesses under new names to “escape the effects of consumers’ negative reviews” and after it notified him of its investigation, he paid an employee to let him use his name to register a different business name.

The charges from the Hennepin County Attorney’s Office relate to untaxed tobacco products Shocinski allegedly purchased from 2017-2022 for his seven vape stores in Minnesota.

In June 2021, the Wisconsin Department of Revenue fielded a report that a hardware store in Osceola, Wis., received several deliveries of vaping supplies addressed to “Billy Shocinski.” No one at the store knew who that was or why the packages were delivered, according to the charges.

Investigators interviewed Shocinski, who said he was opening a vape store and distribution center with his mother in Wisconsin. He also said he operated several vaping stores in Minnesota but that supply was “running low and he needed to pick up the packages from Osceola.”

Shocinski was allowed to leave with the products, but it raised concern that he was evading taxes and led to a criminal investigation by the Minnesota Department of Revenue.

The investigation found that Shocinski operated seven vape stores in Minnesota under some variation of the name Cloud X Vapes. He had locations in Forest Lake, Minnetonka, Waconia, North Branch, Buffalo, Wayzata and Ramsey.

Investigators said the corporate entities that controlled the businesses changed regularly, but all were connected to Shocinski either directly or indirectly. They also found that while 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, Shocinski had been ordering vape products from Demand Vape, a New York-based company. In 2019-2021, Shocinski or Cloud X Vapes bought 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 inspected several of Shocinski’s stores in 2021 and 2022 and found more than $70,000 worth of untaxed tobacco products.

Cloud X Vapes employees told investigators that Shocinski ran the stores. His stepmother acted as his accountant and prepared tobacco tax returns based on the information he gave her.

Shocinski told tobacco tax staff members of the state Department of Revenue that he had paid all of his tobacco taxes. He said he would send tobacco products shipped to Wisconsin, bring them into Minnesota and pay himself 1 cent and file a tobacco tax return based on that amount.

He did not appeal the seizure of any of his untaxed tobacco products.

Shocinski was not in custody; his first court appearance is scheduled for Sept. 19.

A private Facebook group called “I Was Scammed By Cloud X Vapes / Steel X Design” has 135 members and says that, “The people operating these businesses have been scamming numerous people by taking their orders online and then never shipping the product.”

An employee who answered the phone at Cloud X Vapes in Hopkins said he had almost no contact with Shocinski and the owner had been unreachable since news of the lawsuit against his metal company was announced.