I kinda find this ingenious, brilliant and funny all the at the same time: About £240m (or roughly $363,495,600) of compressed cocaine disguised as wooden pallets and bags of coal was seized by the Spanish National Police at the Port of Valencia in Spain on November 30.
The international operation has led to 11 arrests, the seizure of 1.5 tonnes of cocaine and the shutdown of an industrial-sized drug production lab.
~snip
The authorities suspect the group used a charcoal company in Spain as a front to import the cocaine and hide a lab where the drug was extracted from pallets and charcoal, processed and repackaged for distribution across Europe.
Apparently the smugglers used glue and moulds to make the cocaine look like pallets and charcoal.
“To make the cocaine look like wooden pallets they have dissolved the white cocaine powder with a solvent or glue,” said forensic scientist Richard Hooker, of Allen Morgan Associates.
“It has then been placed into moulds shaped like pallets to set.
“When the resin dries out it then solidifies. If you mix it with a dye it then gives the wood effect and gives the appearance of dark wood.
“Once the dealers get it they can then re-dissolve it and reverse the process to extract the cocaine.
“The same process can also be used to make it look like pieces of charcoal by using charcoal powder.”
That doesn’t really seem like something you’d want to put up yer nose, does it?
Watch the video, below: