A Colombian woman demonstrated one of the increasingly creative methods being used by drug traffickers when she was caught with cocaine implants.
Police in Bogota, Colombia, report they have discovered that drug traffickers are employing plastic surgeons for liquid cocaine implants. According to the report of August 7, the 42-year- old woman traveling through Bogota’s El Dorado International airport from Cali, the country’s plastic surgery capital, headed for Madrid with d grams of liquid cocaine implants.
Police were alerted because she had been acting nervously near airport security.
Lieutenant Wilson Silva said cocaine worth around US$36,000 had been implanted “between the flesh and the muscle” of the woman’s thighs.
This form of trafficking cocaine (liquid cocaine in implants) is entirely new to the police. Body scans cannot identify the contents of a surgical implant.
“The abnormal is the new normal. It’s a terrible way to put the drug into the body of these people so they can get it out of the country and deceive the police,” Silva told the press. “Drug mules have long swallowed carefully wrapped balls of cocaine to traffic the drugs in their stomach,” added the police Lieutenant.
Would-be traffickers have been employing many unusual methods. Last month, a Colombian man was arrested at Barcelona’s El Prat airport with a pound of cocaine hidden under his toupee, reported the EFE news agency.
Back in 2016, German customs arrested a 24-year-old Colombian woman at Frankfurt airport after she was found to be carrying 1 kg (2.2 pounds) of cocaine inside her breasts, reported Reuters. The woman admitted to carrying drugs, which had been inserted into her body during a hastily arranged operation.
The woman was taken to a hospital in Bogota where the drug was surgically removed and now faces charges of drug trafficking, with up to 25 years in prison.
For this year, 160 people have been arrested at Bogota’s airport for trying to smuggle drugs.
