Word: contrabanding
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...inspectors no longer have to waste time ripping apart a car to find contraband. They now wield high-tech instruments, including fiber-optic devices for examining the interiors of gas tanks and ultrasonic range finders to determine whether hollow panels really are empty. Last week the San Diego district began a policy of tougher inspections that had cars backed up for more than a mile...
...pack the drug in condoms and swallow them or insert them in body orifices. If the package breaks, the carrier is likely to die of an overdose. One day last November, inspectors at New York's Kennedy Airport caught 13 smugglers who had swallowed or inserted their contraband...
...Eastern Chairman Frank Borman, who gave his mechanics the go-ahead to help agents search planes for illegal stashes. The current probe began last August after Customs agents found two coke shipments totaling 1,722 lbs., or $430 million worth, aboard Eastern flights from Colombia. Investigators discovered that the contraband was generally stuffed into suitcases by baggage handlers in Colombia and then slipped through Customs by fellow conspirators in Miami...
...some extreme cases, the crew members put the plane on automatic pilot, dump the drugs and bail out. Once on the ground, they locate the contraband by tuning to the radio signals from the parachuted cargo. The plane crashes when it runs out of fuel. The loss of a $500,000 plane is a modest sacrifice when compared with the tens of millions the cocaine can bring. Roger Garland, operations supervisor of the U.S. Customs Air Branch based at Homestead Air Force Base in Florida, once tracked a plane with no one in it for 40 miles until it splashed...
...other sobering reminders of the increasing volume--and violence--of the drug trade. In Miami customs officials seized a $119 million 747 jet belonging to Avianca, the Colombian airline, after discovering that it was carrying more than 1,000 kilos of coke, worth $600 million on the street. The contraband was hidden in a shipment of 32 boxes of cut flowers. The incident marked the 34th time in five years that illegal drugs have been found arriving aboard an Avianca plane. Meanwhile, in the Mexican narcotics center of Guadalajara, an agent of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) was kidnaped...