On Wednesday, Panama's National Aeronaval Service seized this homemade semi-submersible vessel in territorial waters off Bocas del Toro. Authorities discovered 5 tons of drugs inside and nabbed four Colombian citizens.
According to CNN, "the ministry (of public security in Panama) did not specify what type of drugs were seized in the raid, but smugglers have previously been caught using similar vessels to transport cocaine into the United States and Europe."
Indeed, you may recall the intense video below from last summer showing US Coast Guard crew members boarding a similar narco-sub in the Pacific Ocean:
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The Uganda Revenue Authority recently nabbed a smuggler attempting to bring banned cosmetics into the country from the Democratic Republic of Congo. The cosmetics were stuffed inside footie pajamas to resemble a child. The cosmetics are illegal because they apparently contain hydroquinone and mercury. Police caught the smuggler on a bus at the Mpondwe border crossing.
(UPI)
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In Tampa, Florida, a man pleaded guilty to participating in a scheme to that trafficked live water monitor lizards from the Philippines to the United States. Read the rest
A man from Worcester, Massachusetts was indicted by a federal grand jury Wednesday with allegedly smuggling salamanders and turtles into the United States. Read the rest
On Sunday, a 16-year-old boy was arrested for allegedly using a remote control car to smuggle meth from Mexico. According to the US Border Patrol, the RC car likely made several trips back and forth to haul more than 50 pounds of meth near the Otay Mesa Port of Entry in the San Diego-Tijuana region. From the San Diego Union-Tribune:
Border Patrol agents believe someone on the south side of the U.S.-Mexico border was able to slip the drug-laden car through a gap in the bollard-style fencing and then drive it to the teen waiting on the north side of the fence, said Border Patrol spokesman Theron Francisco.
An agent spotted the boy hiding in thick brush near the border, about a mile north of the Otay Mesa Port of Entry, around 12:30 a.m. Sunday. The teen had two large duffel bags and a remote-controlled car with him, and agents found 50 packages of methamphetamine weighing more than 55 pounds in his bags.
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Ship's captains and outside monitoring firms have reported waves of GPS jamming around Shanghai's ports, on a scale and of a severity never seen before: the jamming causes ships' locations to be incorrectly displayed and to jump around; the observations were confirmed via an anonymized (sic) data-set from a short-hire bike firm, whose bikes are also mysteriously appearing and disappearing at locations all through the region. The spoofing has created a massive local shipping hazard and has led to spectacular shipwrecks.
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Physicians removed a balloon packed with marijuana from a fellow's nasal cavity 18 years after he smuggled it into prison. The 48-year-old man is now just fine. Physicians from Westmead Hospital in New South Wales, Australia, reported on the unusual case in the British Medical Journal. Apparently the man's girlfriend handed him the package that he shoved up his nose for safekeeping. The package made its way into his nasal cavity where he lost track of it. From CNN:
"A 48-year-old man was referred to the Westmead ENT Department after a CT of the brain, originally performed for headaches, demonstrated an incidental 19x11mm calcified lesion in the right nasal cavity," the report states.
"On questioning, the patient confirmed a long history of unilateral right nasal obstruction and recurrent sinonasal infections."
The rhinolith was removed from the man's nose under general anesthetic, and a subsequent study revealed that it contained a "rubber capsule containing degenerate vegetable/plant matter."
"On follow-up and specific questioning, the patient was able to recall an incident that occurred 18 years prior, while he was incarcerated," the report states. "He remained unaware of the package's presence until presented with the unusual histopathology report."
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A nose out of joint: first reported case of prison-acquired marijuana-based rhinolith"
(British Medical Journal)
image: Patrick J. Lynch, medical illustrator (CC BY 2.5)
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A woman in Austria was expecting a package of dresses she had ordered from a Dutch retailer. Two boxes from the Netherlands showed up at her door and while one of them contained her clothing, the other was packed with 25,000 tabs of MDMA worth a few hundred thousand dollars. From CNN:
The unnamed Austrian woman, 58, mistook the purple pills for decorative stones, police said, but on closer inspection her husband, 59, realized they were probably stimulants and returned the package to their local post office in Linz, Upper Austria...
"The (post) office was equally astonished, which is why the police, and subsequently the narcotics department of the City Police Command Linz, was informed."
Following an investigation by Linz's drugs squad it transpired that the package was intended for Scotland. Police Scotland and the UK's National Crime Agency (NCA) are jointly investigating the matter.
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Hassan Akhtar attempted to send a shipment from the UK to Pakistan of 5,000 tablets of MDMA hidden inside, ahem, Celebrations tubs of assorted chocolate. Now that's a party! From BBC News:
Police said the drugs were discovered by the postal company in tubs of Celebrations chocolates and Akhtar was later identified by CCTV footage.
Det Sgt Rob Hood said the defendant was "clearly looking to profit" from selling drugs and "thought by concealing them in chocolate tubs that they would not be detected".
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Last week, police at London's Gatwick Airport turned up a suitcase filled with bags of white powder. Further testing revealed that the pile of evidence was actually vegan cake mix on its way to a restaurant in Brighton.
According to a statement from the British Transport Police, the bags "were soon reunited with the owner, who has promised officers and staff a slice of cake in return."
(CNN)
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On Sunday, workers at a Safeway supermarket in King County, Washington found 48 pounds of cocaine hidden inside banana boxes stacked in the stockroom.
"This is an ongoing investigation as detectives try to determine where the bananas came from," the King Country Sheriff posted to Facebook. "Cocaine was also found inside similar produce containers in Safeway stores in Bellingham, and Federal Way."
Once they peel back the layers, I'm sure they'll find that a smuggler really slipped up. I bet the buyer will be pissed when the sellers can't produce the goods. Man, I really crack myself up.
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A fellow was recently busted at Toronto Pearson International Airport for allegedly attempting to "import" 5,000 live leeches in his luggage. Apparently an airport security beagles sniffed out the parasites. From National Geographic:
The man claimed that the leeches in his possession were for personal use and that their waste water would enrich his orchids, (says André Lupert, manager of intelligence for the Wildlife Enforcement Directorate at Environment and Climate Change Canada, Ontario Region.)
To Lupert, that seems shaky. “This sort of leech quantity would suggest it was for commercialization,” he says, adding that the man could have been trying to find buyers for leech uses such as treating frostbite and helping with recovery from face lifts. Some people want leeches for naturopathic home use, believing that they relieve pain or can cleanse the body of “bad” blood. Without prescribed antibiotics, however, any such use carries risk of infections...
When Canadian officials seized 5,000 leeches, they were immediately confronted with a problem: what to do with them? They didn’t want to kill the threatened animals—especially while the case remained under investigation. “Ultimately it’s up to the judge if he wants to view the leeches in person because they’re viewed as evidence,” Lupert says. Nor did the authorities want to be saddled with them long-term. These species aren’t endemic to Canada, so they shouldn’t be released into the wild, Lupert says...
The Royal Ontario Museum agreed to accept 50 of the leeches, a researcher at the American Museum of Natural History took 1,000, and authorities are still looking for homes for the rest.
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Federal agents busted eight people for attempting to smuggle 26 pounds of methamphetamine disguised as Aztec souvenir decorative calendars and souvenir statues. The suspects apparently tried to mail the goods from Garden Grove, California to Hawaii.
(UPI via Daily Grail)
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Ports of America in Freeport, Texas donated 45 boxes of ripe bananas to the nearby Wayne Scott Unit prison. When the prison officers unloaded the boxes, they "discovered something not quite right."
"One of the boxes felt different than the others," TDCJ (Texas Department of Criminal Justice) said in a statement. "They snipped the straps, pulled free the box, and opened it up. Inside, under a bundle of bananas, he found another bundle! Inside that? What appeared to be a white powdery substance."
They counted 540 packages of cocaine worth approximately $17,820,000. Now that's bananas!
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Succulents are key to stabilizing the fragile coastal ecosystems of California; they're also extremely popular in China and South Korea, thanks to a fad that's sweeping Asia.
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If you're not up to speed on Hobby Lobby's sketchy investments in illegal artifacts from Iraq, here's the lowdown. Read the rest
EU and Nigerian law both ban the export of e-waste to Nigeria, but a new study jointly authored by scholars from UN University and the Basel Convention Coordinating Centre for Africa found that exported used cars represent a smuggler's bonanza for the illegal dumping of toxic waste.
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