In one of those, “What were they thinking?” stories, two fake diplomatic pouches with cocaine in them were delivered to the United Nations building.
According to reports on the incident, a two poorly constructed white canvas bags, containing some books, weren’t addressed properly. The delivery company, seeing the logo for the UN on them, assumed the bags were meant for the UN and sent them along. Upon opening the bags, they were found to contain hidden cocaine, $2 million dollars worth.
New York police said the packages weren’t very good imitations of diplomatic pouches, but assumed that was the idea. Diplomatic pouches are treated differently at customs and wouldn’t normally be searched. However, UN staff immediately spotted the bogus nature of the packages and opened them, discovering the drugs in hollowed out books.
The mystery remains on who sent the drugs and why. The package originated in Mexico, but there was no return address information. As quoted in the article, the UN head of security said, “In my humble opinion this was the work of narcotics traffickers that were trying to ship something into the United States and their plan must have gone wrong."
What’s interesting is that the cocaine did get across the border without any problems. It made it through the DHL delivery center, and presumably, had it been addressed properly, would have been delivered in the US. Perhaps drug traffickers are testing a new, convenient and inexpensive way to get their products into the States. Or, what might be worse, they’ve already been doing this and one package just happened to go awry.
Using delivery services such as DHL or FedEx are less risky than the regular mail, if only because of all the federal crimes associated with sending contraband through the postal service. It’s still illegal, but additional charges related to using the mails can be avoided.
