Smuggling

Smugglers busted while trying to hide $300,000 worth of gold on & IN their bodies

Seven people have been arrested after they tried to smuggle some 5.5kg of gold from Dubai to India by converting the precious metal into paste before either swallowing or concealing it under their clothes.

Officials at Devi Ahilyabai Holkar Airport in India’s central Madhya Pradesh said that seven members of the alleged smuggling ring were caught red-handed right in the middle of their intricate operation, shortly after they disembarked an India-bound plane from Dubai early on Saturday.

The passengers, including one woman, went to great lengths to avoid detection. Officials say they recovered some of the cargo from the smugglers’ rectums, while the rest was stashed in their clothes, including undergarments.

In their bid to trick customs officials, the suspects turned the gold into a kind of a paste and put it into capsules, so it would be easier to swallow or conceal.

The smugglers, who are said to be repeat offenders, were to fly to Mumbai later on Saturday,  where they would likely sell the gold on the black market. The recovered haul is worth some $298,000.

While the preferred mode of transportation might be unusual in this particular case, gold smuggling in India is a common crime. In one of the biggest busts in May this year, officials seized 110kg of gold in Mumbai, which had been declared as brass metal in customs papers.

Smuggling

Report: Militant Groups in Afghanistan Get Rich Off Mineral Smuggling

The smuggling of Afghan minerals supplies millions of dollars to armed groups, insurgents and strongmen in the country, an Afghan anti-corruption watchdog reported Wednesday.

The Afghanistan Anti-Corruption Network said in a report that militant groups last year received at least $46 million from minerals and precious stones illegally exported from eastern Nangarhar province to neighboring Pakistan.

The report said up to 750,000 tons of marble and talc stones were smuggled in 2016 from various parts of the restive province, where Taliban and Islamic State fighters have been active in several districts.

Smuggling

Mystery Cargo: Suspicions Of Smuggling Swirl Around Airline Tragedy In Kyrgyzstan

Strewn among the aircraft wreckage and obliterated homes outside Kyrgyzstan's capital lie the charred remnants of iPhones, luxury cigarette lighters, and other electronic gadgets disgorged when a Turkish cargo plane slammed into a village near Manas International Airport.

The crash of the MyCargo 747-400 in dense early morning fog on January 16 killed four crew members and 35 villagers in Dacha-Suu, nearly half of them children.

But it also set off a storm of inquiry, fueled by contradictory statements from the Istanbul-based flight operator, into suspicions that some of the cargo was part of an illegal scheme to line officials' pockets or to feed the gray market in this fledgling democracy of 6 million people.

Smuggling

Broody prison officer jailed for 9 months for smuggling prisoner’s sperm

A “besotted” broody prison officer has been ironically jailed for nine months for attempting to smuggle her gangster boyfriend’s sperm from behind bars in a Lancashire jail.

Alison Sharples, 47, was caught with a medicine syringe containing traces of sperm during a routine bag check in October, 2014.

DNA testing of the syringe revealed the semen belonged to either Marvin or Michael Berkeley - twin brothers who were both jailed in 2007 for a multitude of charges ranging from hijacking to kidnapping, reports the Manchester Evening News.

But as only Marvin Berkeley,32, was a prisoner at Sharples place of work, HM Prison Garth, he was the assumed ejaculator. A subsequent search of Sharples’ home uncovered a letter from Marvin.

A “former friend” reportedly told the jury at Preston Crown Court that the semen was slipped under a cell door by Berkeley and was intended to be used “like a turkey baster” to impregnate a “besotted” Sharples who wanted to “have a chocolate baby”.

Smuggling

War in Ukraine helps smugglers in the black market get richer

A separatist commander is gunned down while dining in a Moscow restaurant. Law enforcement agents uncover a makeshift underground pipeline pumping oil from Russia into a Ukrainian border village. Rebel leaders carry out a widespread purge in one of Ukraine’s breakaway regions, detaining senior officials and military personnel alike.

Seemingly disparate events, but is the black market the common link?

A key conduit for international contraband, Ukraine has a rich heritage of smuggling. Mafia syndicates have long operated in the country’s rough-and-ready, eastern Donbas region, and the turmoil of war there has done little to disrupt the interconnected underworlds of Russia and Ukraine. Rather, conflict has simply opened up a new front in economic opportunities for war profiteers, corrupt public officials and the criminal classes to exploit.

Smuggling

‘Vagina smuggling’: Woman stopped over Florida hit-and-run, hides ID in her private parts

A woman was arrested in Florida for driving a vehicle without a valid license. When police asked for her identification, it was nowhere to be found – at first.

The vehicle that Taccara Nauden, 28, was a passenger in was pulled over after reports of the vehicle being involved in an alleged hit-and-run in Hollywood, Florida at the weekend.

Hollywood police discovered Nauden had an active warrant for operating a vehicle without a valid license and had previously been arrested on November 9, 2015 on a $500 bond. She was rearrested on Saturday.

...According to the Huffington Post, the act of “vagina smuggling” is a common but hushed-up topic among law enforcement.

Police said some women have used their genitals to store everything from marijuana to handguns.

Smuggling

Smugglers are caught trying to sneak over 400 iPhone 7s into China by strapping them around their bodies

Chinese border control have caught smugglers trying to bring in hundreds of new iPhone 7 handsets on the same day the product launched.

Smugglers were caught crossing over from Hong Kong to Shenzhen in southern China with phones hidden in their trousers and tied around their waists, reports thePeople's Daily Online. 

According to border control, on September 16, they confiscated more than 400 units of the iPhone 7 and 7 plus estimated to be worth some three million yuan (£344,787). The phones were seized on September 16, the same day that the iPhone 7 and 7 plus went on sale in Hong Kong and mainland China. 

According to reports, customs in Futian port in Shenzhen stopped the first suspicious passenger in the arrivals hall and found that he was carrying five new iPhone 7 phones. 

Smuggling

Biggest ever case of gold smuggling busted by Indian intelligence agency

A major gold smuggling racket involving the smuggling of around 7,000 kilograms of gold worth more than Rs 2,000 crore has been busted by the Delhi Zonal Unit (DZU) of the Directorate of Revenue Intelligence (DRI). Spread over the past two and a half years, this probably is the single biggest case of detection of gold smuggling by any agency in India.The case came to light when the intelligence officers seized 10 kilograms of gold at the domestic cargo terminal of IGI airport, Delhi on the night of 1st September this year. The gold bars of 24 carat purity were admittedly smuggled into India through the Indo-Myanmar land borders and were brought to Delhi from Guwahati by a domestic flight. The market value of the total seized gold was about Rs 3.1 crore.

Smuggling

UK AND SPAIN BREAK UP EUROTUNNEL WEED SMUGGLING OPERATION

It is not the first time Spain and England’s police and secret services have collaborated to bring down drug kingpins and other crime bosses.

This week, after a year-long investigation, police from both countries broke up a smuggling operation that was using cars stolen from British drivers to transport huge shipments of weed from Spain to the UK via the Eurotunnel, or Chunnel as it’s known.

The gang’s modus operandi was to steal cars in Britain, drive them to the Barcelona area, where,Spanish police said, they would let them “cool off” for a few months.

Then the smugglers would through various destinations along Spain’s Mediterranean coast where they would stuff the cars with weed, “in special compartments,” then drive to France.

Smuggling 

Smuggling life

After a month of terrorist violence by the usual suspects, mostly suicidal attacks by brainwashed Palestinian youth, a report surfaced last week of an alleged new, nonviolent direction in Palestinian opposition to Israel: in vitro fertilization.

According to the Los Angeles Times, about 50 Palestinian children have been born over more than a decade via IVF, made possible by their terrorist fathers smuggling sperm from prison. IVF doctors report that sperm samples have arrived in eye-dropper bottles, candy wrappers, potato chip bags, and other improvised containers.

Smuggling

What a pet project! Flyers caught smuggling dogs in check-in luggage

After gold, drugs and currency, officials at Delhi’s Indira Gandhi International Airport have added pet dogs to their list of ‘smuggled’ goods to watch out for.

Recently, staff manning the X-ray machines at the arrival hall found an unconscious dog stuffed between clothes in the suitcase of a woman travelling to the city from eastern Europe. She confessed to having sedated her pet and put it in her check-in luggage.

Customs officials have come across four such cases of “dog smuggling” in the last three months. The owners did it to avoid documentation work, sources said.

Bringing in a pet through legal channels requires a no-objection certificate from the animal quarantine station of the destination country. The pet can come either as check-in luggage or air cargo.

Smuggling

Going up in smoke: Terrorist financing and contraband cigarettes

In 2000, the United States authorities caught two Lebanese brothers for running a multimillion-dollar smuggling operation, moving low-tax cigarettes from North Carolina to high-tax Michigan.

It was a major coup for the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. But the bureau was shocked when it realised where the profits of the syndicate were diverted to: designated terrorist organisation Hizbollah.

The bureau quickly stepped up its focus on the ties between cigarette smuggling and terrorism.

Today, 16 years later, the links between cigarette smuggling and terrorism are no longer surprising. There is increasing evidence that the nefarious plots of terrorists are often funded by a burgeoning global trade in illicit cigarettes.

During the Charlie Hebdo attack last year, a terrorist involved had traded in counterfeit cigarettes.

Smuggling

Israel Busts Plot to Smuggle Spy Drones Disguised as Toys into Gaza

Israeli security forces at the Kerem Shalom border crossing between Israel and southern Gaza recently thwarted a plot to smuggle spy drones, equipped with high-quality cameras, into the Gaza Strip, the Defense Ministry announced on Sunday.

Security guards had stopped an Israeli truck at the border to search its contents and discovered that along with its shipment of toys, the truck was carrying several drones of different types and sizes, all equipped with cameras.

The Defense Ministry said that they suspected terrorist elements in Gaza had been planning to use the drones to gather intelligence on Israeli military positions and movements.

Israel confiscated the equipment and launched an investigation into the smuggling attempt, the latest of several such efforts discovered by Israel’s security service, the Shin Bet, in recent weeks. A joint task force including the Shin Bet, the IDF Coordinator for Government Activities in the Territories (COGAT), the Israel Police, and the Crossings Authority has been formed to intercept illegal shipments of drones and other items into Gaza.

Smuggling

Puppy smugglers bringing rare diseases that can kill humans into the UK, top vet claims

Puppy traffickers are exposing the UK to rare diseases that can kill humans, a top vet warns.

Parasites and ticks living on the poorly dogs – which are battery-bred in horrendous conditions before they are transported hundreds of miles – can be passed on to unwitting owners.

Experts claim 200 pups are brought here illegally every day and many have conditions including parvovirus, echinococcus, leishmaniasis – and even rabies.

Caroline Allen, London veterinary director of the RSPCA, said: “Cases are rising and it’s worrying.