Smugglers getting sneakier. New ways to move contraband become more, more creative

Arizona Daily Star ^ | 12/26/04 | Michael Marizco

[SandRat]

The arrest this month of two Tucson men on charges of smuggling marijuana inside coffins isn't the first time traffickers have used strange methods to try to get their drug loads into and through the United States - nor will it be the last.

Officials have had little to say about their investigation into the recent coffin case. Robert Dean Harper and Timothy Gavin Hynd face charges in connection with the smuggling of 610 pounds of marijuana through Oklahoma, where they were stopped by the state Highway Patrol on Dec. 10.

Both men, who told investigators they were working for a Tucson coffin company, posted bond and returned to Arizona, waiting for the evidence to be presented to an Oklahoma federal grand jury in January, said Hynd's attorney Donn Baker. The investigation is ongoing in Tucson and Oklahoma, said Tony Ryan, spokesman for the Drug Enforcement Administration's Tucson office.

Stashing dope in coffins, investigators say, isn't the only unusual way drugs are shipped from Arizona to the rest of the country. From chocolate-covered, bogus Border Patrol SUVs to fake vehicle rooftops controlled by extravagant hydraulic systems, smuggling tactics have been creative, strange or poorly executed last-minute schemes.

The past year has also seen: an Alhambra water truck hiding 3,600 pounds of marijuana near Nogales, a hollowed out truckload of plywood concealing 995 pounds of marijuana near Kino Springs, and a fake FedEx van - the paint of the hand-drawn lettering still dripping down the side - with one illegal entrant driving.

"Nothing surprises me anymore," says Lee Morgan, the resident agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Douglas. "Every morning, I stand back and wait to see the new idea they'll come up with."

Take the case of the chocolate-covered fake Border Patrol SUVs.

"It tasted like chocolate"

In February 2003, Martin Lopez Cardenas, 34, was arrested while driving Coronado National Memorial Road with a second fake SUV in an area that was supposed to be devoid of Border Patrol agents that night, U.S. District Court records show.

To the discerning eye, the fake Border Patrol insignia wasn't a bad job. Even the painted-on Department of Justice license plate was a good counterfeit, Morgan said.

What stood out was the "mud" around the insignia and the red and blue overhead lights.

"We looked at the darker brown stuff, smelled it, it smelled like chocolate, tasted it, it tasted like chocolate," Morgan said.

Along with the 1,879 pounds of marijuana agents seized, came Cardenas' story: Smugglers had covered the SUVs with chocolate in Mexico so they'd appear mud-covered so the rolling migra U.S. vehicle would not draw attention while still in Mexico.

In November that same year, agents thought it was a little strange to see a dump truck painted with an Arizona Department of Transportation logo driving across a barren dirt road east of Douglas. What they found was Avelino Valdez Vasquez, driving 4,585 pounds of marijuana covered in a thin layer of gravel.

"He was out of place where he was at," Morgan said. That case is pending in federal court.

Hanging over Sonora

Nobody knew what to make of the Cessna hovering over Hermosillo, Sonora, on Dec. 7.

The pilot appeared lost, and after an hour the Mexican federal Attorney General's Office sent its air interdiction task force to investigate. The white and red-striped Cessna 206 scooted away, followed by federal agents and Mexican media toward the city of Los Mochis in Sinaloa, said Belén Flores, spokeswoman for the agency's Hermosillo bureau.

"Possibly he thought we were going to shoot," Flores said.

Hours later, a second Cessna was spotted near Cucurpé, a town southeast of the Sonoran city of Magdalena de Kino. That one also got away, but to do so, had to dump its ballast - of 390 kilos, or about 860 pounds of marijuana.

High-tech trafficking

In August, Enrique Ballesteros Corral, 34, was stopped at the Nogales port of entry with 83 pounds of cocaine worth at least $580,000.

The cocaine was found hidden inside a second ceiling, controlled with a hydraulic jack powered by the SUV's cigarette lighter, federal court records show. He told investigators that he was to be paid $2,000 to take the drugs to Phoenix. His trial is set for early next year.

Many cases of hiding the drugs before reaching Tucson are nothing more than hidden compartments inside trucks and cars, or stashing the drugs inside rental trucks, said Lynnette C. Kimmins, chief of the criminal division for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Tucson.

Francisco Espinoza Estrada, 36, pleaded guilty last month for having 115 pounds of marijuana he stuffed inside a secondary compartment that added a foot of thickness to the front of the bed of the pickup truck he was driving into Lukeville last July. He was to be paid $3,000 to drive the load to Phoenix, his criminal complaint shows. He faces up to 20 years in prison.

Creativity aside, the vast majority of trafficking cases still consist of throwing as many people, cars and backpacks at the border as possible, said Morgan.

Doing that, he said, at least some of it will get through. "The odds are in your favor."

[SandRat]

Border Crime

[Calpernia]

ping

[JustAnotherSavage]

You have expressed interest in this subject in the past; please let me know if you want off or on this illegal immigration ping list. Thanks!!
*******


A related article from a few months back:

http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1211067/posts


Other Than Mexicans
Tucson Weekly ^ | 09/02/2004 | Leo Banks

Posted on 09/09/2004 9:00:22 AM PDT by Marine Inspector

Al-Qaeda is coming! ... Al-Qaeda is coming! It sounds like a Carl Reiner movie. It could be a real scream.

Remember The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!? The 1966 comedy was about a Russian sub that grounded off the coast of New England, and all the goofy characters who showed up to have a look.

You could film the modern version along the Arizona-Mexico border today, because some observers believe al-Qaeda really is coming.

It brings a chill to think these quasi-human Islamo-Facists could be in our midst in Southern Arizona, even for a short time, as they make their way to assigned stations around the country.

You head down to the Arizona-Mexico line to learn what's happening, and what you see and hear is funnier than anything Carl Reiner could dream up.

First, a cautionary note: For those not inclined to find any of this humorous, you're absolutely right. It isn't. But you'll laugh anyway, because the situation along our southern border is too serious and too preposterous to do anything else.

It's been a summer of media whispers that keep getting louder.

· In early August, the Washington Times reported that al-Qaeda is allying with Mexican organized crime groups to infiltrate the United States via Mexico.

· In late July, ABC News reported that the Border Patrol had arrested a woman named Farida Goolam Mohamed Ahmed. The arrest was made at McAllen-Miller airport in South Texas, where Ahmed was attempting to board a flight to New York. She acknowledged that smugglers brought her across the Rio Grande
from Mexico; the FBI declared Ahmed a "person of interest."
----snip-----

The Chicago Tribune recently reported on the arrest of Salim Boughader Mucharrafille, a Tijuana, Mexico café owner, on charges of smuggling Arabs into this country. The Tribune wrote that the case set off alarm bells among U.S. security officials, because it illustrated the vulnerability of the U.S.-Mexico border.

[blackie]

The entrepreneurial spirit is alive and well. :)

[weegee]

...and a fake FedEx van - the paint of the hand-drawn lettering still dripping down the side - with one illegal entrant driving.

"Nothing surprises me anymore," says Lee Morgan, the resident agent in charge of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Douglas. "Every morning, I stand back and wait to see the new idea they'll come up with."

If they cross at the border, they are not "illegal entrants".

They ARE criminals and may have even presented forged documents to enter, but they attempted to cross at legal checkpoints.

[weegee]

I think that they just watched Cheech & Chong's first movie with the van made of marijuana.

[weegee]

In August, Enrique Ballesteros Corral, 34, was stopped at the Nogales port of entry with 83 pounds of cocaine worth at least $580,000.

The cocaine was found hidden inside a second ceiling, controlled with a hydraulic jack powered by the SUV's cigarette lighter, federal court records show. He told investigators that he was to be paid $2,000 to take the drugs to Phoenix. His trial is set for early next year.

Someone really should have taught Enrique some math. He got paid 0.34% of the value of the cargo he was carrying.

Now he may have no "reason" to expect more money for simply driving a car BUT if he had factored in the risk of facing extensive jail time and fines, he'd realize that he's really getting ripped off here.

He faces death if he rips off the drug dealers. He faces death if another drug dealer decides to steal his inventory. He faces death if another crook simply steals his car.

That $2,000 may go a long way in Mexico, but only if you can return home to spend it.

[Squantos]

When a friend of a friend worked with JTF-6 it was well known that the folks to watch were the skilled fabricators working both sides of the border called mennonites.......every single vehicle that was infested with false cavities etc such as a false truck bed that had 2 inches of extra space filled with kilos of contaband.......were made by the mennonites.

Now ya can't bust a fabricator for making the compartment but ya can watch the site and collect who what when and where for intel. Some states have laws against the false compartments....regardless of what ya have in em.

[blackie]

I'll take your word for it, having never seen any of their movies. :)

[SandRat]

and we are still trying to convince our KongressKritter Kolbe of that very fact.

[holyscroller]

Surely you don't mena the Christian sect called Mennonites. I can't in my wildest dreams imagine Christian Mennonites being a part of any such thing. Any idea of why the crooked fabricators picked this name?

[nw_arizona_granny]

Ping

[Squantos]

They ain't crooks, criminal , badguys when they make the compartments.......they don't "fill" the compartments with contraband. They "make" fabricate, construct...........yep the church going version of mennonites.

They were watched to see who their "customers" were.....

[HiJinx]

If they cross at the border, they are not "illegal entrants".

I'm sure you meant to say at the Port of Entry, that is, the legal crossing point.

And I hate to abuse you of your opinion, but you're wrong. Entry at a legal crossing point isn't all it takes to be legal. If you present false papers, you're an illegal entrant. Black and white. Period. No ifs, ands, or buts. End of discussion.

[weegee]

Thanks for the clarification (I did mean Port of Entry, like a security gate with customs officials).

I did call them criminal for presenting false identification. They are different from other "illegal entrants" in that they do go through the legal system to get here. Such false identification may even be legal identification (with false data). We even had people working within the Tennessee DPS knowlingly selling drivers' licenses to people with false names/addresses (out of state NY/NJ addresses, foreign born muslim AFTER 9/11/2001 at that!).

Since a valid passport or driver's license is presented at the checkpoint (even if the data on it is false), I wouldn't quantify these as "illegal entrants" as such. NOTHING can be done to prohibit these (unless we have a global world computer).

These entrants did not hop a fence and are not even planning to stay in this country (drop their illegal package and go back for more or to retire).

[weegee]

Let me also correct the error here, it was 3.4%, not 0.34%. The point still holds.

[Lazamataz]

Now ya can't bust a fabricator for making the compartment but ya can watch the site and collect who what when and where for intel. Some states have laws against the false compartments....regardless of what ya have in em

Which I find to be a uniquely offensive law. If I want to hide my valuables from a would-be thief, the fricking cops shouldn't bust me for it.

Of course, freedom in America has long ago been abandoned.

[Lazamataz]

This ain't creative.

Creative was the guy they busted for about a kilo in his house, who had in his possession about 75 pallets of plumbing parts, all shipped from Brazil.

Just PVC plumbing parts.

Problem was, he wasn't in any way involved with the plumbing industry.

So they searched the parts, they cracked them open, they ran drug dogs over the loads,.... nothing.

So they impounded the parts anyways, and about 4 years later, some bright fellow gets a bright idea, and runs the plastic through a mass spectrometer.

It had a spike in the cocaine-molecule zone.

Apparently, his Brazilian counterpart had rendered the cocaine into the PVC parts. Totally undetectable. Then the parts moved to Murrica, where this fellow would extract the cocaine and sell it.

True story. Happened in the 1990's.

Now THAT'S creative.