From botched breast implants filled with cocaine, to a tiger cub in a suitcase, here are 10
of the craziest smuggling attempts…
10.
Cockatoos in Water Bottles
Smugglers come up with ingenious, and often very cruel ways to try to take animals through
customs.
They stand to make a lot of money if they are successful, but treating animals like
a commodity leads to them being treated very badly.
One of the clearest examples of this happened in 2015, when officials in Indonesia found
24 Cockatoos that had been stuffed into water bottles.
The critically endangered species can sell for as much at 1,000 dollars on the black
market, but with less than 7,000 of them thought to remain in the wild it’s vital that they
are protected.
Luckily on this occasion the birds were found and freed before they could be taken out of
the country, but bird smuggling is a real problem in Indonesia.
About 10,000 parrots are thought to be caught and sold each year, with more than 40% of
them believed to die in transit because of the horrible conditions they are kept in.
9.
Watermelons Full of Weed
Despite the fact that marijuana is becoming increasingly legal across the United States
and around the world, there’s still a massive industry based around the illegal transportation
and sale of the drug.
Smugglers conceal it within everyday objects to try and cover up the smell.
This failed attempt in May of 2015 was trying to do just that.
At the port of Nogales, Arizona, a Customs Border Patrol dog alerted officers to a suspicious
shipment on a tractor-trailer rig, so they investigated further.
The boxes they found were full of watermelons, but some looked kind of weird.
What the smugglers had done was hidden bales of marijuana mixed in with the fruit that
were wrapped in a way to make them look like watermelon.
Of course, it became quite obvious once officers realized what they were looking for, and the
smugglers must not have done a good job, because in total, they found 128 bales that contained
1,455 pounds of weed.
This would have been worth about 728,000 dollars if sold on the black market, and the driver
soon found his whole shipment being confiscated and, in the end, incinerated.
8.
Cocaine Breast Implants
You’ve probably heard of people trying to conceal drugs inside themselves to try and
smuggle them on an airplane or across a border, but this next story takes it to a whole new
level.
In 2012, a woman who was travelling from Bogotá, Colombia to Barcelona, Spain was acting pretty
strangely.
Customs officials pulled her aside for questioning.
Unconvinced by her responses, they decided to take her to one of the back rooms to conduct
a more thorough search.
The female officer conducting the investigation soon noticed some bandages around the woman’s
breasts that were soaked in blood.
She asked about them, and the woman claimed she had recently had breast enhancement surgery.
The officer removed the bandages and found, to her surprise, that there were open wounds
on each breast, with no attempt at stitching at all.
She must have been in extreme pain and was bleeding quite badly.
Furthermore, there were clearly visible plastic bags protruding from the wounds.
The traveller was immediately sent to the local hospital where the full extent of what
had happened was discovered.
Within each breast was a bag containing 1.5 pounds of pure uncut cocaine.
7.
Pigeon in Pants
In 2009, a 23-year-old Melbourne local thought he had come up with a fool-proof plan for
smuggling two pigeons into Australia on his return from Dubai.
Customs officials thought he was behaving somewhat suspiciously so decided to search
him.
They couldn’t believe how brazen his attempt at smuggling was.
First of all they found a money belt that contained bird eggs, seeds and samples of
eggplant.
Australia has very strict biosecurity laws to protect the environment, and this was a
blatant breach since he was trying to hide it.
It wasn’t even the worst thing he had, though, because as they continued their search they
found two live pigeons stuffed in his pants.
He was wearing tights, and had a bird down each leg, each of which was wrapped in packaging
to ensure they wouldn’t escape.
Why someone would want to sneak pigeons from Dubai is beyond me.
Am I missing something?
The man was referred to the quarantine agency to decide how to proceed with the case.
Smuggling animals in this way risks up to 10 years in jail, and a fine of up to 110,000
Australian dollars, which is the equivalent to about 88,000 US dollars.
Add the eggs and the seeds and hopefully they taught him a lesson.
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6.
Cheese in the Spare Tire
Custom and border protection officers are responsible for ensuring contraband doesn’t
enter the country, but it’s not just weapons and drugs that they watch out for.
In 2011 they noticed a significant increase in the amount of agricultural and food products
being smuggled into the US by people who had been vacationing in Mexico.
Quite often people will try to bring things across the border because they are cheaper
to buy, or simply unavailable at home- but there is usually a good reason for this.
It could be for food safety reasons, or because appropriate levels of tax needs to be paid
on goods.
On the 28th December that year, they found one of the biggest hauls of illegal food ever.
A 2008 Chevrolet HHR raised suspicions as it tried to enter El Paso along with a negative
declaration for any plant, fruit, meat, or vegetable products.
Inspection found this to be a false declaration, because they went on to find 10 wheels of
cheese that were hidden in the spare tire well.
This was 116.5 pounds of cheese, all of which was seized and destroyed before the owner
was given a $697.84 fine- the estimated value of the cheese if it had been bought domestically.
Is it even worth it?
5.
Fried Fish Stuffed with Cocaine
In 2015, a Jamaican passenger thought she had gotten away with her smuggling attempt
when she arrived at Miami international airport, but when customs officials decided to put
her luggage through an x-ray scanner, they spotted something that didn’t quite look
right.
There were numerous packets of stuffed fried fish, but the images looked really odd on
the scanner so they decided to investigate more closely.
Finding that some the fish had been sewn together and felt fatter than the others set off all
kinds of red flags.
Who travels with fried fish tied together??
They cut them open and found large packages of cocaine inside.
In total the woman was carrying more than 2 pounds of the drug, worth up to $150,000
on the streets.
Needless to say the fried fish were confiscated, and the woman was arrested for trying to bring
narcotics into the country.
4.
Spiders in a Suitcase
This next attempt at animal smuggling is one of the creepiest things ever!
Lee Ardern, a Welsh Pet Store owner, was boarding a flight from Rio De Janeiro’s international
airport to Europe when an x-ray operator saw some unusual images in his bags as they were
being scanned.
Police were immediately called and began to search through his luggage.
Inside they found a large number of white boxes, that were chock full of live spiders.
In total there were over 1,000 tarantulas in his bags- which he planned on selling from
his store when he had returned home.
At the time, it was the largest number of animals that had been found being smuggled
through the airport.
Could you imagine if they all got out somehow and started scattering all over the plane??
People are trying to smuggle animals more and more every year.
It’s believed that 10 million animals are removed from Brazil’s rainforests each year,
and only about 50,000 are rescued from traffickers.
Ardern was arrested, and prosecuted for the illegal trade of protected wildlife.
His fine was set at about 750,000 dollars and he also faced up to a year in jail.
Is it enough for this type of crime?
What do you think?
Let us know in the comments below!!
3.
Lube Bottles of Steroids
Steroids are another type of drug that are sold on the black market and smuggled between
countries.
Techniques to find them are just as advanced as other drugs, so people trying to transport
them have to come up with creative ways to try and get around the authorities.
Perhaps the craziest known attempt happened in 2008, and it happened on a really large
scale.
The demand for steroids was increasing in the lead up to the Olympics- not by professional
athletes, but by gym goers who wanted to look better.
But how could the dealers get them into the country from Thailand?
The answer, they decided, was by hiding the liquid inside bottles that were labelled as
‘gay lube oil’.
More than 150 bottles were seized in raids across Australia and, rather than lube, they
were found to contain a range of ingredients including testosterone and deca durabolin.
It was thought that most of them had been imported by mail, rather than being carried
in by people, which just goes to show how many different routes that customs officials
have to watch to prevent contraband from entering a country.
2.
Tiger in a Suitcase
Many countries in the world have unique wildlife, and have to keep strict control over people
trying to remove them illegally.
In 2010, a Thai woman called Piyawan Palasarn was acting very suspiciously as she was trying
to board a flight to Iran.
She had a large suitcase, which officials thought looked way to full and heavy, so they
sent it through an x-ray scanner.
Within the case they saw two stuffed tiger toys, along with a real, live, 2 month old
tiger cub that had been drugged to keep it still.
Fortunately the cub was rescued before any long lasting damage was done.
If she had been successful, and the poor tiger cub had survived the flight, she would have
been able to sell it in Iran.
Exotic animals are extremely popular there and can sell for around 3,200 dollars.
Instead, the cub was taken to a local sanctuary for experts to figure out if it was from the
wild or bred in captivity, and Piyawan was arrested- facing a fine of up to 1,300 dollars
and a possible jail term of up to 4 years.
1.
Cocaine Leg Cast
Cocaine is one of the most profitable substances in the world, so it can earn massive rewards
for those willing to take the risk to sell and transport it.
Of course, there are many downsides to it as well, and for those who do get involved
with it, punishments can be long lasting.
Spain is a popular gateway to take the drug into Europe, so their customs officials are
well trained in identifying unusual passengers, particularly from South America, and finding
their contraband.
In 2009, a 66-year-old Chilean man with a broken leg landed at Barcelona airport, and
officials soon began to believe that there was more going on here than it initially seemed.
After investigating, they applied a chemical that tests for cocaine, and found that his
entire leg cast had been made from it.
This really was a brazen attempt at smuggling the drug right under the noses of officials,
and he was also found to have 6 beer cans and two hollowed out stools that also contained
the drug.
In total he was carrying 10.7 pounds of cocaine, potentially worth millions of dollars.
Despite this, the most troubling part of the story was his leg.
Subsequent X-ray scans showed that he did have an open fracture of the tibia and the
fibula, so he definitely needed a cast- but at the time officers were still unsure whether
he had been injured in an accident, or had purposefully hurt himself, or maybe someone
else had broken his leg, in order to try and smuggle the drugs through security checks.
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