Types of Concealment

Types of concealment are as varied as the goods or the containers used to transport them. Any kind of space can be used to include concealment: containers, trailers, hollow box sections of a container/trailer wall, the floor, the roof, etc.

There are, however, basically four types of concealment in containers/trailers:

· concealments between the outer and inner walls, between and in the framework etc.;

· concealments using false roofs and floors;

· concealments within the cargo inside the container.

The place to conceal the cocaine or other goods can be:

• on the terminal;

• during transport from terminal to consignee;

• on the ship (involvement of crew).

Crabs, prunes, and wigs are used to hide smuggled drugs.

Some of the methods of concealment are very clever: car brakes, fake bananas, hollowed-out walking sticks and drugs carried internally by couriers. Every conceivable method imaginable is tried and tested by the traffickers.

One of the most imaginative smuggling efforts involved a specially routed coffee table with packs of hash inside the wooden top. A drug dealer who ran a mobile phone business used this modus operandi to ship in cannabis.

Smuggling methods are seemingly limited only by a trafficker’s imagination. A man with one leg was caught with cannabis stashed inside his artificial limb.

Cocaine worth a large amount of money was found stuffed inside frozen crabs brought in by a qualified chéf; cannabis was discovered inside tubs of dried prunes; hash was found inside elaborately designed hollow doorframes – these are more commonly used methods of smuggling.

Smugglers use wigs, sausage spice, footballs, false-bottomed luggage, food, hollow timber, clothes, electronic goods, bamboo furniture, book covers and hollowed-out shoes.

Couriers are directed to take special routes via several international locations, sometimes stopping at big airports.

There is an endless queue of these couriers, known as swallowers, who are willing to risk the hazardous journeys through international airports that can take up to a week – journeys that occasionally end in death when packages burst internally.

Drug concealment tricks:

1. Asphalt tanker trucks: hot liquid asphalt tankers are loaded with marijuana in front and rear compartments.

2. Baskets: commercially available baskets filled with marijuana are reportedly available to buy in Jamaica.

3. Batteries: twelve-volt car battery cases concealing drugs within empty cells.

4. Boats: sailing boats filled with marijuana and the original fiberglass covering replaced professionally.

5. Body carry/clothing/shoes: tailored to fit waistcoat, underwear and leg bandages with custom-shaped drug packs inside the devices.

6. Fish: live tropical fish in plastic aquatic environments used to mask the presence of submerged packages of liquid cocaine.

7. Bottles: heroin concealed within professionally-sealed alcohol bottles in cardboard cartons.

8. Cans: beer and soft drink cans professionally sealed with a commercially-available canning machine.

9. Containers: containers with factory-built double floors primarily used to ship air cargo.

10. Film: highly sophisticated concealment of cocaine within Polaroid film cartridges.

Exercise 7. Read the text below to find some other methods of concealment.

Text 2*

Date: 2015-09-18; view: 447; Нарушение авторских прав