Fruits, animals, construction materials – everything has been used by creative criminals for smuggling narcotics. Here are a few of the most bizarre examples:
Marijuana in watermelons, US-Mexico border
January 2017
Some marijuana smugglers operating around the US-Mexico border must have looked at large, round watermelons and thought, “Hey, we could pack a lot of weed in there!” And so they did. United States Customs and Border Protection officials at a cargo facility in Pharr, Texas, discovered almost 1,400kg of marijuana hidden in a commercial shipment of watermelons, being carried on a tractor trailer.
CPB officers, when their suspicion was aroused, used a non-intrusive inspection system and sniffer dogs to find the narcotics. The 290 packages of marijuana were thought to be worth around $600,092 (Dh2.2 million).
Weed in carrots, US-Mexico border
January 2016
The United States border with Mexico appears to be a hotbed of innovative smuggling. A tractor-trailer coming from Mexico that was supposedly carrying loads of carrots was, in fact, transporting marijuana. At the Pharr International Bridge cargo facility, a search by United States Customs and Border Protection officials revealed plenty of weed dressed up as the normally blameless orange veggies.
The search operation intercepted more than 1,100kg of weed. The smugglers had created marijuana-filled orange packages that looked very much like carrots. Their street value of the contraband was estimated at around a half a million dollars or Dh1.86 million.
Cocaine in bananas, Malaga and Valencia, Spain
November 2016-March 2017
Under a drive called Operation Esplit, Spanish authorities in November announced the arrest of two men and the seizure of 17kg of cocaine hidden in a shipment of bananas. Nearly 7kg of that was dressed up as bananas (fake fruits made of resin). The cocaine was seized from coastal cities of Malaga and Valencia.
Before Operation Esplit, the authorities had found nearly 1 ton of the drug hidden in a commercial shipment of bananas passing through Sevilla. All three shipments were traced to South America.
The European Monitoring Centre for Drugs and Drug Addiction, in its 2016 report, said that perishable goods were chosen for hiding drugs because such goods were passed quickly through checkpoints to prevent spoilage. Also, the natural smell of fruits could confuse inspecting officials and sniffer dogs, preventing them from detecting the drugs.
Cocaine stashed in pineapples, Algeciras, Spain
June 2015
A shipment of nice, juicy pineapples was found stashed with almost 200kg of cocaine. The drug was stashed inside the scooped out fruits. This was discovered inside a shipping container at the southern port of Algeciras. “Among the thousands of fresh pineapples inside the 12 containers, they found fruit hollowed out and stuffed with drugs and then covered with a yellow wax that simulated the color of pineapple pulp,” said an Interior Ministry statement.
The ship carrying the container had arrived from Central America. The pineapples were destined for Madrid and a place near Barcelona; both addresses were for businesses said to be run by Spanish nationals of Colombian origin.
