Search Results: smuggling (117)

Scarface. Cocaine Cowboys. How to Leave Hialeah. Now contraband smuggling story fans can add a new title to their list of must-haves: Tony Dokoupil’s The Last Pirate. The book’s subtitle says it all: “A Father, His Son, and the Golden Age of Marijuana.” Dokoupil, a reporter for NBC, will speak about his gripping, sometimes hilarious memoir this Sunday at the Miami Book Fair International. Beforehand, he spoke to our friends at the Miami New Times about the longing he feels for South Florida’s long-lost era of pot smuggling, despite the way the business tore his own family apart.
“I’m nostalgic about that era of marijuana because I think it was the final era in which we had criminals in this country who were truly larger cultural figures,” he says. “Pot today is so boring. It’s such a field of guys in suits with dimpled ties and square jaws and creeping bellies from too many steaks.” More at the Riptide blog.

While the War on Drugs has become the largest political sideshow the United States has even produced, there is simply no denying the heaping helping of humor that has manifested from the nation’s lust for the dust and Uncle Sam’s madcap approach to keeping their nose clean, so to speak. Yet, that has not stopped thousands of people every year from pushing bags of brown, white and green dope into nearly every orifice of their bodies, in hopes of bamboozling drug-sniffing authorities all over the country.
Unfortunately, while squeezing a fat sack of crack between your butt cheeks can sometimes be an effective method for avoiding a shakedown, the moment some large meathead cop whispers something in your ear like, “What’s your sign, sailor,” there is a damn good chance you are about to fisted in the back room by a group of sexually confused law enforcement cronies.

DEA


Federal agents busted a onetime Playboy model and a pilot at John Wayne Airport after their private plane that had arrived with them from Las Vegas was found to have nearly 60,000 Ecstasy pills and almost 90 pounds of Ecstasy powder onboard, authorities say.
The Smoking Gun reports a tip about possible drug or currency smuggling led federal agents to question Krista Boseley, 30, and Gilles Lapointe, 61, upon their landing at the Santa Ana airport on Thursday, Oct. 9.

Matt Green/Flickr.


The correctional officer-jail inmate relationship is often a fraught one, rife with resentment, misunderstandings and violence. But sometimes, just sometimes, the two groups can put aside their differences and work together. That’s the silver lining we can take from the news that two current Rikers COs, Steven Dominguez and Divine Rahming, have been charged with smuggling cocaine and oxycodone into the prison with the help of an inmate and his girlfriend. Another former Rikers guard, Deleon Gifth, who resigned earlier this year, was arrested Monday on charges that he was paid $500 to deliver what he thought was oxycodone to an inmate back in February.
The Village Voice has more on these three stooges.


When a member of stoned society makes the decision to travel with a small stash of weed, he or she has made a risky decision to tug at the short-and-curlies of law enforcement and challenge them to a drug war duel. It’s simple, you are trying to make your way across town to get stoned with your buddies, and the meathead police are trying to stop you from having a good time. The whole goddamned scenario is essentially what would happen if the reality police show ‘Cops’ and a video game such as ‘Grand Theft Auto’ had a one night nipple twisting lust fest and nine months later, one of them popped a bastard love child. That’s exactly what trying evade law enforcement while smuggling dope is: a spontaneous fling between the asshole of reality and a program that can be learned and ultimately, beaten like a borrowed mule. Here are 7 tips for how to do that shit right the first time.

dodge2315/Flickr
Smuggler’s Cove, Santa Cruz Island, California


Mexican fishing boats, known as pangas, are typically pretty modest in size, with outboard motors and a big, high bow to give the vessel more buoyancy when casting and retrieving large nets. But according to Virginia Kice, spokesperson for the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement agency (ICE), they have increased steadily in size, speed, range, and navigational capabilities. Bigger boats can float more dope, and it is not uncommon for these pangas to be carrying literally a ton or more of low-grade Mexican marijuana. What is uncommon is where they have been making port lately, once they do get north of the border.

flickr.com/mrthomas

We’ve been over this before, but bringing pot into prison for an incarcerated inmate is not the best idea, but it’s especially dumb if you’re already in jail yourself or happen to work there.
Case and point: Vermont inmates Trish Belliveau and Wesley Kidder and former Windsor Prison guard Brett Jasinski, both convicted of bringing marijuana into a detention facility after Belliveau bribed Jaslinski into bringing pot and cigarettes back into the prison while Belliveau was out on furlough. It’s a strange story that involves some bumbling cloak and dagger actions, notably that the entire thing was caught on security cameras.

Toke of the Town/Sean MacEntee.

There’s a new all-time record for the largest unsuccessful pot-smuggling attempt in Arizona. The previous record was set in January, when a Mexican man attempted to drive 14,121 pounds of pot — with an estimated value of $7.1 million — through the port of entry in Nogales.
A U.S. Customs and Border Protection spokesman says details on this bust will be released at a press conference tomorrow afternoon, but says this haul was worth more than $10.1 million. Phoenix New Times has the full story.

For the second time in two weeks, a Mexican national was busted trying to smuggle weed into the United States by hiding the product in jalapeños.
Whereas the Mexican national who attempted to bring more than 3,300 pounds of weed on May 27 stuffed the pot inside cans of jalapeños, the 27-year-old gentleman who tried to bring his haul into the country on Friday opted for the fresh variety. Valley Fever has the rest.

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