The days when the old suitcase-with-the-false-bottom ruse could get a box of smokes, a bottle of absinthe, or a stack of saucy pictures past the eagle-eye of the customs officer are long past. Smugglers today are playing a bigger game.
Drug traffickers use boats, planes, trucks, and cars to shift the bulk of their merchandise, but they also use individual carriers. These people are called “mules,” and it’s a risky occupation.
It didn’t work out well for Janice Bronwyn Linden. In November 2008 she was caught entering China with three kg of methamphetamine in her luggage; she claimed the drug had been planted in her suitcase. In mid-December 2011, the 38-year-old South African woman was executed by lethal injection.
Unknowing Drug Carriers
It’s true some drug mules do not know they are carrying contraband; Mexican gangs have taped drug packages to the underside of American cars on their side of the border for recovery later by colleagues in the U.S.
Even dogs have been used as carriers. In 2006, Colombian drug smugglers surgically inserted drugs into puppies and tried to pass them off as show dogs heading for a competition. Three of the six pups died from infected incisions, the others were rescued and live happily, it is said, in Colombia.
Children too get dragged into the business, possibly against their wishes. In May 2008, a Mexican woman was arrested in England; she had strapped about 10 kg of drugs to the legs of two kids; she’s serving a nine-year prison sentence.
Some people are duped into carrying a package home at the end of their vacation: “it’s a birthday present for my mother who lives in Calgary.” Very likely it’s something like a hollow ornament filled with drugs and the carrier has an extremely unpleasant end to her or his holiday.
Professional Drug Mules
Others are well aware of what they are doing and take the chance they’ll get through and hit a big pay off. This may have been in the mind of Nobanda Nolubabalo, although the hoped-for money offered doesn’t seem to have been that good. The 23-year-old woman, also from South Africa, was arrested in Thailand on December 13, 2011 after a flight from Brazil. Hidden within her luxuriant dreadlocks officials found 1.5 kg of cocaine. The South African Broadcasting Corporation reports that, “Police say the suspect admitted smuggling the drugs with a street value of R1.2 million (about $150,000). She told police that she had been hired to deliver it to a customer at a hotel in Bangkok for R16,000 (almost $2,000).” She may be facing the death penalty or, at the least, a very long stay in Thailand’s notoriously violent and squalid prisons.
Inventive Smuggling Schemes
Other professionals go in for what’s called “body stuffing” or “body packing.” This involves putting drugs into a flexible contained, usually a condom, and swallowing it. On arrival, the carrier chugs down a hefty dose of laxative and passes the packages in what is said to be a painful process.
The downside of this smuggling method is that sometimes the condoms break as they go through the digestive system. As the Discovery Channel reports, “In 2007, a 23-year-old British woman suffered a massive heart attack on a transatlantic flight after having swallowed 60 packets of cocaine. She was dead by the time the plane made an emergency landing.”
And, necessity being the mother of invention came into play when a Chilean man broke his leg. As CNN reported in March 2009: “Spanish police arrested a man arriving at Barcelona’s airport from Chile after determining that the cast on his fractured left leg was made of cocaine…”
Drug mules are constantly coming up with new ways to outwit the authorities, but every new scheme soon gets uncovered.
Sources
- “Drug Mules.” Investigation Discovery. Undated.
- “South African Janice Linden Executed in China.” BBC News, December 12, 2011.
- “Another South African Nabbed for Drug Smuggling.” SABC, December 13, 2011.
- “Smuggler with Broken Leg Wears Cocaine Cast.” Al Goodman, CNN, March 6, 2009.
Rupert Taylor - Rupert Taylor is the editor of a magazine that provides background to current events.
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