BajaNews - 5-26-2012 at 10:20 AM
http://www.sandiegoreader.com/news/2012/may/25/stringers-sur...
By T.B. Beaudeau
May 25, 2012
A pickup-truck driver that was set to travel into the U.S. from Mexico at the San Ysidro border station on May 23 was found to have 15
Velveeta-cheese-block-sized packets of marijuana attached to his vehicle.
The owner of the Toyota Tacoma had left his truck parked on the street May 22 in the Otay area of Tijuana. The owner reportedly called police when he
went out to his truck on the morning of May 23 and noticed one of the pot packages lying in the street, apparently forgotten by the people who planted
the would-be contraband.
Having read warnings published in local media about attempts by smugglers to plant drug shipments in border-crossing vehicles, the truck's owner
phoned police, who, upon arrival, discovered the pot with the help of a drug-sniffing dog.
The bricks of marijuana, affixed to the truck's chassis by magnets and wrapped in plastic, were slathered with mustard in an attempt to disguise the
aroma. The owner stated he had noted a car passing by his truck several times on the evening of May 22 but did not think much of the occurrence. No
arrests were made.
Tijuana’s Secretaria de Seguridad Pública Municipal (Secretary of Public Safety) commented that sometimes GPS devices are included in such packets so
that smugglers can locate and track the vehicle that is carrying the contraband once it crosses into the U.S.
Several daily border-crossers have been victimized by such “pot plantings” in the past several months, including a primary school teacher who found a
backpack containing 30 kilos of pot inside her car as she was heading toward the border.
Recently, a magnet-clad two-kilo paquete of marijuana was found in the street near the San Ysidro border crossing. Also on May 22, a resident of Las
Playas was alerted by motorists that something was hanging from under his vehicle as he approached the Otay border station — another magnetized pot
package. Unbeknownst to him, the motorist was hauling 12 packages of marijuana.
BajaNews - 5-26-2012 at 10:22 AM
Appears to be a major trend right now:
http://forums.bajanomad.com/viewthread.php?tid=60255
thebajarunner - 5-27-2012 at 08:09 AM
If you discover it before they do you can always retrieve the brick, locate the GPS chip, slip it under the bumper of a Migra green and white rig
(they are everywhere) tape a few leaves under his bumper and away you go.
The crooks will scratch their heads over that one, and the little terrier dog will sit next to that bumper forever.
SFandH - 5-27-2012 at 12:22 PM
Easy problem to solve, just add low tech, cheap magnetometers to all the detection gear at the guard stations. A boy scout compass would probably
work.
1bobo - 5-27-2012 at 01:29 PM
The price of Humboldt green is 1/3 what it was 10-12 years ago. I'm amazed there's even a market for Mexican dirt weed, much less worth smuggling it.