Drug smugglers can get pretty creative when it comes to sneaking their products into countries. Some build giant catapults or use old bazookas to launch weed into the states. Others just strap pounds of cocaine to their bodies and hope no one notices how lumpy they look. Some even just ship it over the border and hope for the best. But there’s one method that smugglers around the world seem to keep coming back to, time after time. Produce disguise.
In 2016, smugglers stuffed marijuana into fake carrots. In 2017, it was disguising marijuana to look like 34,000 key limes. And now, in 2018, European authorities have discovered a massive shipment of cocaine hidden inside a bunch of fresh pineapples.
Generally speaking, pineapples have a ton of benefits. They cure coughs and colds, help you lose weight, strengthen bones, improve eye health, boost immunity, and fight off infections. But did you know that they are good hiding places too?
The coke-stuffed pineapples were discovered between police in Spain and Portugal in an investigation that began almost a year ago. The joint investigation led them to search a series of shipping containers, where they discovered that the shipment of pineapples from South America was moving more than just the spiky fruit.
“This organised international group had repeatedly brought large quantities of cocaine to the European continent,” Portuguese investigators said in a statement.
Around 1,642 pounds of cocaine were split into various packages, coated in yellow wax, and hidden inside hollowed-out shells of the pineapples. Police seized the fruit stash and raided a lab in Spain, where the stuff was allegedly going to be cut and repackaged. They made nine arrests in the process.
