There are a whole bunch of creative ideas when it comes to stashing cocaine before hopping onto a plane. This… this is new.
A Colombian man might have been a little bit too creative when he was arrested for hiding half a kilogram of cocaine under his toupee.
Police said the cocaine smuggler attracted their attention because he was looking nervous and had a disproportionately large hairpiece sticking out from under his hat.
The man was detained at Barcelona’s international airport after half a kilo of cocaine was found hidden under an oversized toupee, which is a whole lot of cocaine.
Arriving on a flight from Bogota, the man attracted police attention and it was soon revealed that the man had stuck a package containing about 30,000 euros ($34,000) of cocaine to his scalp, covering it with an unconvincing toupee and hat.
“There is no limit to the inventiveness of drug traffickers trying to mock controls,” said the police statement.
The statement enclosed a photo of the middle-aged Columbian man – apparently still wearing the wig – with his eyes blocked in the image. No other details have been given about the man’s identity.
Over 100 kilos of cocaine was seized by Spanish police at the Barcelona-El Prat airport in 2018, showing just how on the lookout police are for unusual behaviour. Spain, with its historic and linguistic links to South America, is an important gateway for cocaine to Europe, mainly from Colombia.
In recent years, police have found coke inside breast implants, hollowed-out pineapples, a wheelchair cushion, a plaster cast encasing a man’s broken leg, and a 42-piece crockery set. Now Spanish Police can add “Operation Toupee” to the growing list of creative methods.
