Newsstand - Close to 6kg cocaine dumped on LAX-SYD flight

Airline not yet specified but you can work it out.

Posted here as it may be of interest to all FTers. :)

6kg of cocaine found dumped in passenger jet toilet (http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,22866826-421,00.html) [news.com.au]

The Boeing 747 was searched by Customs officers on Sunday morning after arriving in Sydney from Los Angeles.

Officers and specialist dog teams found 12 blocks of shrink-wrapped white powder in a garbage bin in one of the toilet cubicles... confirmed as 5.7 kilograms of cocaine with an estimated street value of $660,000.

Customs manager Gayle Brown said the drugs had been handed over to the Australian Federal Police.

"It's pretty obvious that whoever planned to import these drugs got cold feet at some stage," she said.

...Customs officers focus on checking passengers but also regularly search international aircraft.

"This latest detection provides another good example of why we need to continue carrying out these physical checks."

Darn. Airline lost my luggage again. How much compensation am I owed?


:D

9gr. :rolleyes:

"It's pretty obvious that whoever planned to import these drugs got cold feet at some stage," she said.


Yeah right! Couldn't be that the folks servicing the plane are in on it.

so are the OZ customs folks gonna scrutinize FTers more closely when you're turning around and heading right back on your $1480 biz class ticket? Nice cover for delivering narcotics!

One wonders exactly how many pax were still to be cleared and just how rigorously they were checked?

Would imagine that there would be some extra scrutiny of the manifest.

Maybe this is the reason you are only allowed to use the toilets in your class? Makes it easier to determine just who had a big dump.:rolleyes:

So which of the two airlines are we suspecting? :rolleyes:

Yeah right! Couldn't be that the folks servicing the plane are in on it.

This seems like an obvious inside job to me,

Yeah right! Couldn't be that the folks servicing the plane are in on it.

so are the OZ customs folks gonna scrutinize FTers more closely when you're turning around and heading right back on your $1480 biz class ticket? Nice cover for delivering narcotics!

No one here has yet mentioned if it was the QF flight or UA flight departing from LAX on November 30th. It was UA.

It has been mentioned in the press that the authorities suspect it was a female American pax who has since left Australia that was the (aborted) drug smuggler and that airline or airline-retained parties working on the ground may have been involved.

SYDNEY airport workers with access to international tarmacs are suspected of aiding and abetting cocaine smugglers after almost 6kg of the drug was discovered in an American plane.

....

Investigators strongly suspect the importation was left in the bin for someone with airside accreditation, such as a cleaner or caterer, to collect, as these workers are not subject to Customs scans.

....

A Customs Air Border Security Team, acting on a tip-off from US law enforcement authorities, searched United Airlines flight UA 839 after its arrival at Sydney International Airport early Sunday.

The flight had left Los Angeles International Airport late on November 30.

An American woman, who was a passenger on the flight and has since flown out of Australia, is believed to have been the courier.

Customs and the Australian Federal Police said that officers boarded the Boeing 747 with sniffer dogs and found 12 blocks of shrink-wrapped white powder.

http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22871801-662,00.html

Yeah right! Couldn't be that the folks servicing the plane are in on it.

so are the OZ customs folks gonna scrutinize FTers more closely when you're turning around and heading right back on your $1480 biz class ticket? Nice cover for delivering narcotics!

Mileage runs invite more scrutiny than claiming "tourism", so "nice cover for delivering narcotics" those tickets really are not.

I heard that some passengers with 3-6 hour connection times at SYD were told on Monday-Thursday last week (i.e., before the actual drug dump incident) that while they were legally entitled to enter into Australia when coming off those flights they were being told to stay airside if going onwards and having no luggage to claim at SYD within such timeframes.

Turning right around and heading right back on those tickets you mention would be a bit difficult given that the tickets involved flights to and from AKL.

This seems like an obvious inside job to me,

It would seem to me that most larger volume drug smuggling operations into and out of Australian commercial airports that use passenger planes have an inside job aspect to it -- and by that I would include not just the cleaning and catering crews and other ground employees for the airlines and their contractors but also some Australian border (immigration and customs) agency employees.

So much for those UA "security stickers" in the bathrooms, where the 6kgs of drugs were placed in a single rubbish bin. [FWIW, the rubbish hole doesn't have them.] If done by the female passenger mentioned in the article, where and how did she get the drugs airside in the US in the first place and how did they manage to be taken into the bathroom, by a makeup kit?

The US government gave the Australian government a heads-up according to the article. When was that done, how specific was the heads-up and why didn't they take action on their own to wrap up the smuggling operation?

down the drain gets a whole new meaning with that value :p

down the drain gets a whole new meaning with that value :p

I thought the person just stuck it down into the garbage bin in the bathroom rather than the sewage tank itself. That sewage tank would be some even nastier stuff to go through, whether law enforcement or law breakers are doing the dredging through the sewage. :eek: Sorting out trash sounds somewhat less disgusting.

If the AU Customs are just getting on this, then they are living in the dark ages....

"Internals" are nothing new in the world of drug smuggling... in fact more narcotics go out the back doors of airports (from workers), than the front doors.

Cleaners, food service people, the list is endless of people who get involved. It can be anywhere, attached under seats, put in the wall of the cabin, food carts, false roofs in baggage cans.

Ground crews rushing to an aircraft aren't always so quick and numerous as they need to get that planed turned around, but because they have to fetch their own "cargo" on board.

If done by the female passenger mentioned in the article, where and how did she get the drugs airside in the US in the first place and how did they manage to be taken into the bathroom, by a makeup kit?

Body packing it on board, then removing the pack when in the bathroom. Magnetometers don't detect plastic or narcotics taped to a persons body. Backscatter X-Ray would show it though.

So much for those UA "security stickers" in the bathrooms, where the 6kgs of drugs were placed in a single rubbish bin. [FWIW, the rubbish hole doesn't have them.]

I think the purpose of the security seals are to prevent items from being "planted" on board. Since the trash containers are emptied each flight, this isn't an issue. If you put a security sticker on a trash container, how would it be usable??? :confused:

But all International Baggage including Hand Baggage is X-Rayed upon entry to OZ, unless the Perp intend to hide it on their person, but 13lbs does seem a lot to hide.

Often you cant even get rubbish in the bins after a few hours on Long Haul flights so it looks more like an inside job to me put in the bins at LAX.

this is ofcourse the same LAX that schedules ground handlers based on their gang affiliation to prevent violence on the ramp.

Body packing it on board, then removing the pack when in the bathroom. Magnetometers don't detect plastic or narcotics taped to a persons body. Backscatter X-Ray would show it though.

Body packing is what I thought but then something else I heard led me to believe that was not the case.

Backscatter x-rays would generally show it but that really comes down to how it is packed.

I think the purpose of the security seals are to prevent items from being "planted" on board. Since the trash containers are emptied each flight, this isn't an issue. If you put a security sticker on a trash container, how would it be usable??? :confused:

I was being sarcastic on a few levels. Here are two:

1. The UA security stickers in the bathrooms aren't really securing much of anything from anyone in the bathrooms.
2. The rubbish bins are "useful" for hiding things yet not sealed -- obviously because they cannot really be sealed any better.

Whether the trash containers are emptied or not each flight doesn't much matter when ground personnel are in on illicit action. Bathrooms in one circumstance, seat cushions or "lifevests" in another .... same result.

Wonder if the Australian Federal Police thought about seizing the aircraft.

The US government gave the Australian government a heads-up according to the article. When was that done, how specific was the heads-up and why didn't they take action on their own to wrap up the smuggling operation?

perhaps looking for "others" involved in the op?

Remember the Aussie police giving up their own citizens to the Indonesian authorities in a heroin smuggling ring? Some were sentenced to die and Indonesians don't fool around, nor do they care what citizenship you hold. Only after the citizens of Australia made a big sting about what happened, the Aussie gov begged the Indonesian gov to commute the kids sentences to life in prison. Australian citizens did agree that the kids needed to be punished but could not figure out why the Aussie police allowed them to board and fly to Indonesia with the drugs?

perhaps looking for "others" involved in the op?

Perhaps. If that is what some government employees were attempting, they (i.e., the government employees somewhere) blundered it. If they didn't blunder it, then it's probably something other than what you suggest.

dupe...

However it was found, I feel kinda sorry for the person who was the delivering mule. It ain't gonna be a happy (or pretty) X-mas this year.

Doing a web search, it seems QF staffers were implicated in a cocaine smuggling operation LAX-SYD 2-3 years ago. There's also allegations made by the defence team of an Australian woman convicted of smuggling pot into Indonesia that QF staff use QF a/c to courier drugs around, and may have planted the drugs in her baggage.

http://www.qantas.com.au/regions/dyn/au/publicaffairs/details?ArticleID=2005/may05/3267

http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/200511/s1517288.htm

I still don't understand why you would smuggle weed into Bali, you can pick your own on the side of the road!

I still don't understand why you would smuggle weed into Bali, you can pick your own on the side of the road!

Really? I only thought someone would offer you weed. Compared to other places it was remarkably rare, I heard because the government cracked down on it because the Aceh rebels were funding themselves via it.