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Tag: cocaine trafficking

  • Man Smuggled Pound Of Cocaine In "Curious" Toupee

    Man Smuggled Pound Of Cocaine In "Curious" Toupee

    The 65-year-old Colombian man was charged with a “crime against public health.” 

    Sometimes, the ingenuity of drug smugglers is downright awe-inspiring. In other instances, their efforts are simply laughable. 

    The latter was the case in Spain last month, when authorities arrested a man traveling from Colombia who was trying to smuggle half a kilo of cocaine beneath an ill-fitting hair piece. 

    Sporting a curious bump beneath his toupee, border officials said that the man tried to hide the bad wig with a hat, but there was no covering up his nervousness when he went through a border checkpoint. 

    “His toupee was very curious, but the agents there have a lot of expertise and they pay attention to people’s attitude,” the National Police told La Vanguardia, according to NPR. “His nervousness was very noticeable as he was about to pass the security checkpoint.”

    Authorities On Alert

    Because of the man’s demeanor authorities became suspicious, especially once they gave his hairstyle a second glance. When they asked him to remove his hairpiece they found 503 grams of cocaine, said to be worth about $33,000 USD. 

    This week, Spanish authorities released a picture of the man on Twitter, with his hairpiece in place, and another showing the bundle of cocaine on his head without the hairpiece. 

    The 65-year-old Colombian man was not identified when the story hit the news. He was charged in Spanish courts with “a crime against public health” and remains in custody, the Spanish National Police said.

    Other Smugglers

    Earlier this summer Spanish authorities intercepted another notable drug-smuggling attempt. In that case, an air force official traveling with Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro was found to have 86 pounds of cocaine in his suitcase aboard the presidential plane.

    The drugs were discovered when the presidential plane stopped over in Spain while en route to the G20 economic summit in Japan. 

    The official, Sgt. Manoel Silva Rodrigues, was taken into custody in Spain, and Bolsonaro immediately went on Twitter to speak out about the incident, according to The New York Times. 

    “We won’t tolerate this type of disrespect to our nation!” said the president, who has taken a tough-on-drugs stance. 

    Still, Brazilian opposition leader Marcelo Freixo took the opportunity to criticize Bolsonaro’s approach to controlling the drug trade. 

    “The cocaine case in the presidential plane shows the error of pursuing a war on drugs in Brazilian favelas, which victimizes the poor,” he wrote on Twitter. “Trafficking of arms and drugs generates fortunes the world over and involves powerful people. It’s necessary to follow the money and pursue those at the top.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Italian Billionaire Tied to Ship Seized With 20 Tons Of Cocaine Onboard

    Italian Billionaire Tied to Ship Seized With 20 Tons Of Cocaine Onboard

    The cocaine, worth $1.1 billion, was hidden inside dried goods, nuts and scrap metal on the ship.

    A ship operated by Mediterranean Shipping Company and owned by JP Morgan was held for weeks after a bust found 20 tons of cocaine onboard.

    While at port before embarking to the Netherlands, the ship was raided and the drugs—worth $1.1 billion—were found, hidden inside dried goods, nuts, and scrap metal.

    “The MSC Gayane is the largest vessel seized in U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s 230-year history,” Casey Durst, CBP’s Director of Field Operations in Baltimore, said in a statement, according to Forbes.

    Mediterranean Shipping Company

    This was the third drug bust of 2019 on a ship operated by Mediterranean Shipping Company. MSC is owned by the billionaire couple, Gianluigi and Rafaela Aponte, who are worth $11.1 billion. The Apontes also control MSC Cruises, the fourth largest cruise ship company in the world.

    MSC had been participating in a customs check program created by CBP called Customs Trade Partnership Against Terrorism (C-TPAT). The program gives shipping companies the opportunity to speedily clear border checks in return for strengthening their security measures. MSC is now temporarily suspended from the program.

    However, Forbes reported that according to CBP Press Officer Stephen Sapp, it is not the ships or the company that are the problem. 

    “It’s not indicative of any specific shipping company, it is specific to the source nations where they’re making port calls,” Sapp told Forbes. “Along that route, there are opportunities for people to seal drugs inside those containers.”

    Crew members of the MSC Gayane were arrested and charged with possession. Jakob Larsen, head of security at the international shipping association BIMCO, told Forbes that drug traffickers often smuggle drugs onto large vessels.

    MSC’s global PR manager, Giles Broom, told Forbes, “We have a very long track record of cooperation with authorities in the United States. It’s an industry-wide problem that we’re tackling at the moment, it impacts the entire shipping and logistics sector.”

    U.S. Attorney William M. McSwain tweeted a statement on the seizure this past Monday. McSwain stated that a deal with two international shipping firms with financial interests in the MSC Gayane had been made. Millions of dollars of security and surety bonds were placed. The ship has been returned to commercial service.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Feds Nab $1 Billion in Cocaine at Philadelphia Port

    Feds Nab $1 Billion in Cocaine at Philadelphia Port

    Federal agents seized more than 30,000 pounds of cocaine on the ship.

    Federal agents boarded a cargo vessel docked at Philadelphia’s Packer Marine Terminal on June 18 and seized more than 30,000 pounds, or 16.5 tons of cocaine, which authorities described as one of the largest drug seizures in United States history.

    Two members of the ship’s crew, including the second mate, were arrested and face federal charges of conspiracy to possess cocaine aboard a ship. The seizure and arrests come on the heels of a similar bust in March 2019, where an approximate 3,200 pounds of cocaine were discovered in a shipping container at the Port of New York/Newark. Customs and Border Protection described that apprehension as the second largest cocaine seizure at that port and the largest in 25 years.

    An affidavit obtained by the Associated Press noted that the cargo ship, the MSC Gayane, sails under the flag of Liberia and originated from Chile before traveling through Panama, the Bahamas, Peru and Colombia prior to its arrival in Philadelphia. The document alleged that crew members told government agents that they assisted in loading the cocaine while at sea off the west coast of South America. The crew members also alleged that several ship employees helped to transfer bales of cocaine from 14 boats on two separate occasions.

    As People noted, federal agents began the bust on Monday (June 17), shortly after the MSC Gayane had arrived in Philadelphia, but the actual search of the vessel began on the following day. The 16.5 tons of cocaine were transported to an undisclosed federal facility for further investigation. All media reports noted that additional drug seizures and arrests may be forthcoming.

    The ship’s parent company, MSC Mediterranean Shipping Co., issued a statement in regard to the incident, which noted that it “took the matter seriously and is grateful to the authorities for identifying any suspected abuse of its services,” as well as its “longstanding history of cooperating with U.S. federal law enforcement agencies to help disrupt illegal narcotics trafficking,” including U.S. Customs and Border Protection.

    William M. McSwain, U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania, praised the law enforcement agencies’ actions in a Twitter post.

    “While the investigation is ongoing, I want to thank all our federal, state and local partners for your incredible work so far in this investigation,” he wrote. “This amount of cocaine could kill millions—MILLIONS—of people. My office is committed to keeping our borders secure and streets safe from deadly narcotics.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Fishermen Reel In $1 Million In Cocaine

    Fishermen Reel In $1 Million In Cocaine

    “We trolled past it. Every time we passed it we caught a fish,” one of the fishermen said.

    A pair of South Carolina fishermen had the catch of a lifetime on Sunday when they reeled in a bundle of cocaine worth about $1 million. 

    “We trolled past it. Every time we passed it we caught a fish,” one of the men told WCSC. In fact, a school of mahi-mahi, a popular catch with the fishermen, were swimming around the bundle.

    Before they packed up their rods and reels for the day, the duo decided to see what was in the package. They managed to snag the floating debris and pull it toward their boat. 

    When they saw the drugs inside, they contacted the Coast Guard. The agency alerted the North Charleston Police Department, which had officers meet the fishermen back at their marina. The police officers estimated that the bundle contained 30 to 50 kilos of cocaine, estimated to be worth $750,000 to $1 million, according to Coast Guard Lt. j.g. Phillip VanderWeit. 

    VanderWeit said that the boat was about 70 miles southeast of Charleston, an area where such a significant drug find is not common. 

    “It definitely doesn’t happen off the Charleston coast every day,” he said. “It’s a bit more common further south, whether in the Caribbean or the south Pacific.”

    Authorities will investigate the origins of the drugs. 

    In January, a fisherman in the Florida Keys also found a bale of cocaine, although that catch only had an estimated worth of $500,000, according to authorities. In that case, the drugs were floating beneath the dock when the man returned from a day of fishing. 

    In December 2017, the Coast Guard rescued a sea turtle that had become ensnared in more than 1,800 pounds of cocaine, worth about $53 million. 

    “After a period of lengthy questioning, it was determined the turtle did not have any useful information. We released him on his own recognizance after he agreed not to return to these waters again. #turtlesmuggler,” the agency tweeted at the time. 

    They then followed up with a more serious tweet about the prevalence of cocaine coming into the United States. 

    “In all seriousness, we love our sea creatures and do everything we can to help them when we see them in distressed situations. Additionally, during this patrol nearly seven tons of illicit narcotics with a street value over $135 million was confiscated.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • More Than 200 Bags Of Cocaine Found In Body Of Man Who Died On Plane

    More Than 200 Bags Of Cocaine Found In Body Of Man Who Died On Plane

    The man reportedly suffered seizures and died mid-flight.

    A man flying out of Mexico never made it to his destination after dying mid-flight from a botched drug-smuggling scheme.

    The 42-year-old, identified as Udo N., was a man of Japanese origin who began his journey in Bogotá, Colombia. He transferred in Mexico City to a flight destined for Narita International Airport in Japan.

    However, he began suffering seizures during the flight and the plane made an emergency landing in Hermosillo, a city in Sonora, Mexico.

    “Crew noticed a person suffering convulsions and requested to make an emergency landing in Hermosillo, Sonora,” read a statement from the Sonora attorney general’s office.

    Upon landing, paramedics boarded the plane and pronounced the man dead.

    The official cause of death was determined to be cerebral edema (swelling in the brain) caused by a drug overdose. The man had ingested 246 plastic bags filled with cocaine, measuring 1 by 2.5 cm each, that were discovered in his stomach and intestines.

    As the producer of about 90% of cocaine destined for the United States, it’s no surprise that Udo N. was traveling from Colombia. Drug mules coming from the country are routinely busted for drugs—but that’s not all they are packing.

    A 2018 bust at the international airport in the capital city of Bogotá, Colombia, yielded smugglers attempting to bring cash into Colombia from Mexico—a payment from drug traffickers to Colombian gangs for cocaine. The smugglers had ingested the money amounting to big sums.

    The Guardian reported, “Authorities said that mules often swallowed up to 120 pellets of cash, with five $100 bills in each latex capsule. A typical ingestion would conceal and move $40,000 a person, though investigators said they previously caught someone with $75,000 in their system.”

    An especially heinous case involved a Colombian veterinarian who was caught surgically implanting live puppies with liquid heroin to smuggle the drugs for a South American cartel. In February, Andres Lopez Elorez was sentenced in Brooklyn federal court to six years in prison for his crimes dating back to 2004.

    “I have made mistakes,” Elorez told the judge, according to the New York Times. “I know I cannot justify my actions.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Cocaine "Superhighway" Created By Destabilization In Venezuela

    Cocaine "Superhighway" Created By Destabilization In Venezuela

    In 2018 alone, over $39 billion worth of the illegal drug likely entered the U.S. from this Venezuelan highway.

    A CNN report has found that the political destabilization of Venezuela has created a “cocaine superhighway” as authorities look the other way, resulting in tens of billions of dollars’ worth of the drug entering the U.S. in 2018 alone.

    U.S. officials are blaming the Venezuelan military and political elite, saying that they’re profiting from the increasingly active drug trade during the years of upheaval and hyperinflation.

    According to the extensive report put together after a months-long investigation, small planes allegedly full of Colombian cocaine have dramatically increased in number, from two per week leaving Venezuela to nearly one every day. Not only this, but they are now leaving from the northwest region of the country instead of its southern jungles, reducing air time.

    The planes mainly travel to Honduras and Guatemala, where many migrants and asylum seekers are currently traveling from to reach the relative safety of the U.S.

    The cocaine on board is so valuable that it’s worth significantly more than the planes themselves, which are often “then discarded or set on fire upon arrival.”

    In 2018 alone, over $39 billion worth of the illegal drug likely entered the U.S. from this Venezuelan highway.

    Some U.S. officials are concerned that Donald Trump’s proposal to cut off all financial aid to Honduras, Guatemala, and El Salvador would only make the situation worse. This aid has been specifically used to fight the drug trade, and without it, anonymous officials told CNN that the sudden shortfall could cause a “bonanza” for traffickers.

    “Right now, it’s wide open,” said one U.S. officer, “then it’ll just be a free for all.”

    Authorities have been unable to stop these flights largely due to the fact that Venezuela has such a large border area. At the same time, shipments by truck flow through the border with the aid of the Venezuelan military, according to a border patrol defector.

    “Everything was coordinated by the brigade commander,” said the anonymous defector, now living in Colombia. “He’d send a lieutenant to tell you what needed to cross, and this was arranged high up above. Those who didn’t agree were swapped out… Automatically.”

    Recent reports in the U.S. have found that cocaine overdose deaths have increased in recent years, but these statistics have been overshadowed by the opioid epidemic.

    Data from the National Center for Health Statistics obtained by The Washington Post found a spike in cocaine-related deaths from 2011 to 2016, rising about 13% each year.

    Batches of the drug mixed with the highly potent opioid fentanyl have also been an increasing problem, with police in Massachusetts finding a threefold increase in drug samples containing both from 2016 to 2017.

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Are Law Enforcement Efforts Making Cocaine Trafficking Worse?

    Are Law Enforcement Efforts Making Cocaine Trafficking Worse?

    Researchers examined the effects of law enforcement’s counter-drug strategies on drug trafficking. 

    New research led by the University of Alabama is showing that cocaine traffickers through Central America are continuously adapting to law enforcement efforts in ways that may be making the problem worse rather than better.

    Dr. Nicholas Magliocca, lead author of the paper showing these findings, developed a model of the “cat-and-mouse game” of cocaine smuggling vs. government efforts to seize and prevent the movement of the drug.

    “This work demonstrates that supply-side counterdrug strategies alone are, at best, ineffective and, at worst, intensifying the trafficking problem,” said Magliocca according to PHYS.org. “These networks have demonstrated their ability to adapt to interdiction efforts, identifying and exploiting new trafficking routes in response.”

    The findings, published Monday in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, show that drug traffickers routinely find ways around routes and means of transportation that are blocked by law enforcement efforts and as a result have expanded their area of use.

    In 1996, cocaine trafficking networks spread across 2 million square miles of land. By 2017, that had expanded to 7 million square miles.

    The results may suggest that new methods are needed to effectively counter drug trafficking. In 2014, the Global Commission on Drug Policy recommended decriminalizing all drugs and diverting resources from punitive measures into harm reduction strategies.

    “Policy shifts towards harm reduction, ending criminalization of people who use drugs, proportionality of sentences and alternatives to incarceration have been successfully defended over the past decades by a growing number of countries on the basis of the legal latitude allowed under the U.N. treaties,” wrote former President of Brazil and Global Commission on Drug Policy chairman Fernando Henrique Cardoso. “Further exploration of flexible interpretations of the drug treaties is an important objective, but ultimately the global drug control regime must be reformed to permit responsible legal regulation.”

    Dr. Magliocca and team’s model used the admittedly limited information on drug trafficking routes, volume, and timing to simulate and predict the decision-making process of cocaine smugglers and how their networks adapt to government anti-drug strategies. The results show that current strategies are only causing these networks to spread out, making the same law enforcement efforts more difficult and costly over time.

    “The adaptive responses of narco-traffickers within the transit zone, particularly spatial adjustments, must be understood if we are to move beyond reactive counterdrug interdiction strategies,” Magliocca concluded. His team and others will now be able to move on to exploring alternative methods to counter this growing problem.

     

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Border Patrol Seize Nearly $1 Million In Cocaine Hidden In Tomatoes

    Border Patrol Seize Nearly $1 Million In Cocaine Hidden In Tomatoes

    The cocaine seizure was one of two major drug busts that happened at a Laredo port of entry last week. 

    Border patrol agents in Laredo, Texas had a productive weekend—seizing $3 million in drugs including more than $850,000 in cocaine that was being smuggled in a shipment of tomatoes. 

    “Securing the cargo environment is a critical mission for [Customs and Border Protection] and this weekend’s significant cocaine seizure underscores the need for our officers to stay ever-vigilant and aware of the narcotics threat while facilitating lawful commerce,” Albert Flores, the port director at Laredo Port of Entry told KTXS12 News.

    The Dallas Morning News reported that on Friday (March 1) an officer with CBP stopped a tractor trailer. When officials searched the truck, they found 111 packages of cocaine hidden in 44 packages. If they had been sold on the street, the drug could have raked in $857,500.

    On Saturday (March 2), officials at another bridge border crossing in Laredo stopped a man with an American passport who was driving through the crossing. In his vehicle they found 4 pounds of heroin and 120 pounds of methamphetamine, which were detected using drug-sniffing dogs. Those drugs had a street value of more than $2 million, officials said. 

    “I congratulate our frontline officers for their firm commitment to carry out the CBP mission and protect the public from illegal narcotics,” Flores said.

    President Trump has talked about how a border wall will stop the flow of narcotics into the United States. “Our southern border is a pipeline for vast quantities of illegal drugs, including meth, heroin, cocaine, and fentanyl.”

    However, experts point out that most drugs are smuggled into the country via legal entry points, like the Port in Laredo. Because of this, experts have argued that increasing resources for Customs and Border Protection would do more to stop illegal drugs than a wall would. 

    “A wall alone cannot stop the flow of drugs into the United States,” Christopher Wilson, deputy director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars told Vox in 2017. 

    “If we’re talking about a broader increase in border security, there could be some—probably minor—implications for the overall numbers of drugs being trafficked. But history shows us that border enforcement has been much more effective at changing the when and where of drugs being brought into the United States rather than the overall amount of drugs being brought into the United States.”

    In addition, demand for the drugs mean that smugglers will always look for new and innovative ways to get them into the country, experts say. 

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Fisherman Reels In Cocaine

    Fisherman Reels In Cocaine

    The fisherman found a bale of cocaine worth a reported $500,000.

    A south Florida fisherman got a surprise catch when he spotted a bale of cocaine after returning from a day on the ocean. 

    According to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office, which covers the Florida Keys, a fisherman noticed something floating beneath the docks when he returned from a day out at sea. When he cut into the package and saw white powder, he alerted authorities. 

    Sheriff’s Office Deputy Martin Digrius and Coast Guard officials responded, and the US Border Patrol also arrived on the scene. Inside the plastic package, authorities found 25 smaller packages, which contained 40-60 pounds of cocaine, the sheriff’s department said. According to The Miami Herald, the cocaine was worth about $500,000. 

    Cocaine use has been rising, especially as the drug becomes more commonly used alongside opioids. The amount of cocaine seized by the Coast Guard has been increasing: In 2015, the agency seized 145 tons of the drug and detained 503 people; by 2017 those numbers had risen to 225 tons and 708 suspects, according to The Miami Herald.

    Intercepting cocaine in the ocean — or even washed up on beaches — isn’t wholly unusual in Florida and on the West Coast, but it still makes headlines. 

    In December of 2017, Coast Guard sailors rescued a sea turtle that was floating amid 1,800 pounds of cocaine, worth about $53 million. 

    “After a period of lengthy questioning, it was determined the turtle did not have any useful information. We released him on his own recognizance after he agreed not to return to these waters again. #turtlesmuggler,” the agency posted on Twitter. 

    They followed up with a more somber note:

    “In all seriousness, we love our sea creatures and do everything we can to help them when we see them in distressed situations. Additionally, during this patrol nearly seven tons of illicit narcotics with a street value over $135 million was confiscated.”

    Intercepting cocaine in the ocean before it lands in the US can help save lives, Acting US Attorney Alana Robinson said in September 2017. 

    “The seizure of this cocaine means tens of thousands of pounds won’t make it to our communities and hundreds of millions of dollars won’t make it into cartel coffers,” she said. 

    “To drug traffickers who may think they are invisible in the middle of what seems to be a vast, empty ocean: You are not alone. We are doing everything we can to prevent you from using the high seas as your personal freeway.”

    View the original article at thefix.com

  • Narco Submarines Give Coast Guard A Run For Their Money

    Narco Submarines Give Coast Guard A Run For Their Money

    The DEA estimates that 30 to 40% of narcotics coming into the country are hauled on the homemade submarines.

    Narco subs seem to be on the rise as a stealthy method of smuggling drugs, a shift that comes amid booming cocaine production in the South American country most known for it.

    In the first nine months of 2018, the Colombian navy caught 14 drug-hauling vessels, three times as many as they intercepted the year before according to Business Insider.

    In 2017, the U.S. Coast Guard offered similar observations, reporting a “resurgence” in low-profile vessels like subs.

    But those captures likely represent only a small fraction of the drug-laden subs headed stateside, according to the online news outlet. The DEA estimated that 30 to 40% of narcotics coming into the country are hauled on the homemade submarines – and authorities are probably only catching 5% of them, Insider reported.

    The shift comes amid a boom in the coke-making industry in Colombia, where there is now more land dedicated to coca-growing than ever before in the nation’s history, according to the New York Times. 

    “It’s a curve that’s permanently going up and hasn’t reached its inflection point,” the Colombian defense minister, Guillermo Botero, told reporters this year. 

    The first time U.S. authorities snagged a drug-running sub wasn’t until 2006, when law enforcement intercepted a homemade vessel hauling 3 tons of blow near Costa Rica’s Pacific Coast. 

    Five years later, American authorities encountered their first stealth sub on the other side of the isthmus, in the Caribbean. Though the traffickers tried scuttling the vessel to ditch the load, authorities ultimately recovered 14,000 pounds of coke from the craft. 

    Since then, Colombian crime rings have pumped out an estimated 100 drug subs per year, launching them in the country’s rivers where there is relatively little policing to stop them. And, as the blow industry continues booming, traffickers have more and more money to pour into making sure their underwater vessels are ever more sophisticated and able to escape detection. 

    But the recent uptick in intercepted subs may not mean that there’s more of them. Coast Guard officials told Business Insider that’s actually a sign of anti-trafficking success. Yet, Mike Vigil, former chief of international operations for the DEA, chalked it up to the sheer volume of drug trafficking on the high seas. 

    “They may be capturing more,” he said, “but again, that’s because there’s a hell of a lot more being using to smuggle drugs.”

    View the original article at thefix.com