43 Weird Ways To Smuggle Things
People come up with all kinds of weird ways to smuggle things
Published 10 years ago
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Former England bowler Chris Lewis was jailed in 2009 for 13 years for smuggling more than £140,000 worth of cocaine into Britain inside his cricket bag. The 41-year-old hid the drug in liquid form in five tins of fruit and vegetable juice (above). But his plans went awry when he was stopped by customs officers at Gatwick Airport following what he claimed was an innocent holiday in St Lucia.
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They may look like mini Easter eggs, but sure won't taste the same… US Immigration and Customs Enforcement arrested Miami resident Esteban Galtes on a drug smuggling charge after he was intercepted at Los Angeles International Airport (LAX) just before Christmas in 2010. Officers searched Galtes' luggage and discovered more than 14 lbw of cocaine, much of it camouflaged as pastel-coloured, egg-shaped candies. If only he'd gotten the holidays right…
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A piece of furniture containing blocks of cannabis that made up part of more than 5 tonnes of cannabis - worth £12m - seized by the Metropolitan police and HM Revenue and Customs in October 2005. The haul was recovered at a port on the East coast of England, it had been imported from Mexico hidden in a cargo of furniture and artefacts.
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Packets of chocolate syrup and salad dressing concealing cocaine paste in Los Angeles. A mother and daughter traveling from Spain were carrying bags of condiments that customs officials at Los Angeles International Airport decided felt unusually thick. They opened it up to find a plastic bag with cocaine paste placed inside, and then found another syrup packet in their checked-in luggage that contained more cocaine paste. Customs officials said they confiscated more than 10 pounds of the paste, a gummy substance that is extracted from coca leaves and then dried and turned into the white powder sold on the street.
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Packets of opium covered in cinnamon hidden inside a rice cooker in Los Angeles. Officials found the rice cooker stuffed with 3 pounds of black opium, which had been coated in cinnamon and wrapped in plastic, being transported by a man arriving at Los Angeles International Airport from Iran. They also found a glass jar with a dark jelly-like substance in a suitcase that turned out to be opium. Officials said the opium had a street value of about $110,000 (approx £72,000)
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A packet of cocaine hidden in a bag of ground coffee in Miami. Three bags of roasted, ground coffee arriving at Miami International Airport in a package from Guatemala in October were actually filled with more than 3 pounds of heroin, customs officials said. Customs officials said they noticed anomalies during an X-ray and felt that the weight of the three bags was different from that of others in the shipment.
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Bags of powdered dairy product that contained cocaine in New York. A woman arriving at Kennedy International Airport in New York from Guyana was found with six bags of milk and custard powder that were filled with cocaine. Customs officials said they found 13 pounds of drugs in her luggage, with an estimated street value of $230,000 (over £150,000).
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A woman was arrested for attempting to smuggle crystal meth in Ferrero Rocher wrappers. The 46-year woman was arrested at Sydney Airport, Australia, after Australian Border Force officers discovered 500 grams of the drug. She will appear at Darwin Magistrates Court facing charges of supplying methamphetamine in commercial quantity, possessing methamphetamine in commercial quantity and possessing a thing to administer a dangerous drug.
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ome of the £1 million stash of cocaine which a 53 year old woman, from Ayr, attempted to smuggle into the UK hidden in children's toiletries. She has been jailed for seven years at the High Court in Glasgow. The woman was arrested at Glasgow Airport after arriving on a flight from Sao Paulo, Brazil, via Amsterdam.
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A 91-year-old Australian man has been charged with importing cocaine inside packets of soap in a crime that – if proven - would make him the world’s oldest drug dealer. Victor Twartz, from Sydney, allegedly smuggled ten pounds (4.5 kilograms) of cocaine on a flight from New Delhi on July 8, but apparently was a victim of a scam. The drugs were found inside 27 packets of soap.
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Spanish police seized 200 kilos of cocaine found inside hollowed-out pineapples that arrived by ship from Central America, the interior ministry said. The drug-stuffed fruit was found among 10 shipping containers filled with pineapples that arrived in the southern port of Algeciras, one of Europe's largest ports, the ministry said in a statement.
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Packets of cocaine amounting to a street value of £817,000 that were seized by officers at the Eastern Docks in Dover, Kent, where James Bettridge from Walsall was stopped in August last year, after arriving on a ferry from Calais, France. Unluckily for Bettridge the hamster carrier bag did not hold as a disguise .
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More than 15 tons of marijuana hidden in a truck that supposedly was hauling mattresses were seized by the Border Patrol at the Otay Mesa border crossing with Mexico in San Diego, California. Authorities say the truck's trailer was stacked floor to ceiling with plastic-wrapped bundles of marijuana, which had an estimated street value of nearly $19 million. The Mexican driver was taken into custody.
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Police in the Mexican border city of Tijuana said a small unmanned aerial vehicle overloaded with methamphetamine had crashed into a supermaket car park. It was spotted about two miles from the San Ysidro crossing with California by an anonymous caller. Officers said they recovered six packets of the drug, weighing more than six pounds, which were taped to the six-rotor remote controlled aircraft.
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