The limitless growth of the international cocaine trade and the game of whack-a-mole to stop it has actually moved innovation and testing from medicine trafficking companies to obtain their item out right into the globe. Concealing drug in banana shipments, hollowed-out lumber, and soy flour have ended up being popular go-to methods, however traffickers aren’t resting on their laurels and always discover brand-new means to get an old job done.
Below are 5 creative approaches to transferring cocaine throughout borders.
Avocado Pits
When a shipment of avocados appeared in the town of Barendrecht, not far from Rotterdam in the Netherlands, in April, it appeared typical. But when among the avocados presented of its instance and fell to the floor, it fractured open. It was an extremely convincing plastic avocado, and beneath its broken covering was a pit full of drug
A more complete search revealed several other phony fruits hiding in the middle of the real deal, which had actually been delivered from the Dominican Republic. In total amount, authorities found 400 plastic avocados concealing 80 kgs of cocaine.
Given that Rotterdam is among the key entry factors for cocaine right into Europe, 80 kgs is a tiny load. Nonetheless, 553 kilograms were uncovered in Rotterdam the next day in an additional delivery of avocados. This haul utilized the much more traditional technique of just covering the bricks of drug with the fruit and hoping it would certainly go unnoticed.
Smaller sized lots are typically used by traffickers to check brand-new courses and methods. If the lighter shipments make it via unseen, the criminal team might try sending out a much bigger quantity using the exact same ways. But when medicines are seized, as they remained in this situation, the approach is normally disposed of from their criminal tool kit.
Meat
Not long after his release from jail, a trafficker wanting to return into business used his ranching experience as camouflage.
Ángel Javier Varón Castro, a Colombian herdsman with connections to cocaine trafficking teams from before he wound up behind bars, was arrested once again in 2021 in addition to 20 various other suspects after authorities confiscated 200 kgs of cocaine wrapped in meat.
Meat has actually been used to attempt to sidetrack medicine detection pets, yet in this case, the meat was utilized as camouflage. The team wrapped the blocks of drug in pork and afterwards vacuum-packed them in the Colombian city of Envigado before packing the drugs right into a cooled vehicle headed to the USA.
Varón Castro was previously apprehended in 2012 and extradited to the United States, where he offered a jail sentence for cocaine trafficking until 2020 Upon his go back to Colombia, he came back right into the drug game, collaborating with ex-FARC dissidents to traffic cocaine.
Surgical Implants
Medication mules smuggling drug inside live human bodies is a story that goes back years. However a group called the” Surgeons went a step further than the regular method of ingesting little, deflated balloons full of drugs.
This Colombia-based criminal team filled up cosmetic implants with liquid drug. After that 2 doctors working with the team executed cosmetic surgery, embedding the implants right into the breasts or legs of females the team recruited with guarantees of operate in Europe. The ladies would then fly to Madrid, where others would certainly eliminate the implants and extract the drug.
Ten people were apprehended in 2020 for apparently joining the scheme.
Surf Boards
Uruguay’s waters have garnered boosting focus in the last few years, as the peaceful South American nation has actually become an vital transportation nation for drug heading to Europe. While container ships are the common technique for relocating the medication, three people were jailed in 2023 for attempting to traffic drug to Europe concealed in surf boards.
Authorities first realized something was off due to the weight of the surfboards. The normally buoyant foam cores of the boards had been burrowed and replaced with bricks of cocaine. A detailed evaluation of each surfboard discovered a total amount of regarding 50 kilos of drug.
Had this specific plan been successful, the drugs would certainly have at some point made it to Portugal, Spain, and Italy.
Narco-Cats
When you think of pets and medicine trafficking, you may envision a medication discovery pet dog or Pablo Escobar’s infamous cocaine hippos Yet a feline lugging drug is an uniqueness– the pet was detained in 2021 attempting to go into a Panamanian jail with a tons of drug on its back. A comparable case occurred in 2025, when a feline was caught trying to go into a jail in Costa Rica.
Possibly the cutest of all approaches, counting on narcocats is not likely to scale well. Larger operations making use of numerous pets might be challenging– instead like rounding up pet cats– however their use does have some benefits: the pet cats did not speak a word to private investigators.