Women try to smuggle dead relative onto flight

by Sean McLachlan on

We talk a lot here at Gadling about annoying airline passengers, from the guy who smashes our knees by reclining his seat back as far as it can go, to the self-righteous fellow who simply must convert us before the plane lands.

Two women in England have them all beat–they tried to smuggle a dead body on board. The unnamed women were stopped at Liverpool’s John Lennon Airport on Saturday as they wheeled their “sleeping” relative up to the gate for a flight to Germany. Airport officials became suspicious and when they began to ask questions about the 91 year-old man, the duo’s story quickly unraveled.

By covering the man with a blanket and putting sunglasses on him, they apparently thought they could slip by security. Perhaps they were inspired by the Australian who got a bag labeled “bomb” past security or the United flight that had a stowaway scorpion.

The two suspects, who the police have identified only as women aged 41 and 66 from Oldham in Greater Manchester, have been charged with failing to report on death and have been released on bail pending an investigation and, most likely, a trial.

Man arrested for smuggling kangaroos

by Sean McLachlan on

It seems that animal smuggling has become the trendy thing lately. Just in the past month a man was nabbed at LAX smuggling lizards, and another man was arrested in Norway smuggling pythons. Both of these guys had wrapped up the critters and strapped them to their chest.

Now a man in Indonesia has been arrested for smuggling kangaroos. Since roos are a wee bit too big to tie to one’s body, especially when there’s ten of them, he made the logical choice of smuggling them by boat. That didn’t stop him from getting caught, though. Initial reports state the animals were red kangaroos, a protected species from New Guinea. Five were dead at the time the man was arrested.

The international trade in protected and endangered species is a lucrative business. All of the animals in the incidents mentioned would have fetched large sums of money on the black market. It seems customs officials have more to look out for than drugs, bombs, and bottles of water.

The smuggler faces up to five years in prison. The surviving kangaroos have been given to an animal sanctuary.

Dulles customs agents arrest man for his coke and chicken smuggle trick

by Scott Carmichael on

Washington Dulles customs agents arrested a man last week for trying to smuggle cooked chicken into the US stuffed with cocaine. The haul was just 60 grams, but that is still worth $4,300 on the street.

While smuggling cocaine isn’t too rare, customs officials do come across new methods every week.

Of course, smuggling your stash in cooked chicken is particularly stupid, as department of agriculture cops are always on the lookout for meat in your luggage. You might as well wear a sign telling them you are a smuggler.

Some other wacky finds at the border we’ve covered here on Gadling:

Two North Korean diplomats arrested for smuggling

by Annie Scott on

Two North Korean diplomats tried to claim diplomatic immunity when they were arrested in Stockholm for smuggling cigarettes.

The man and woman, who were caught driving their tobacco-filled car off a ferry from Helsinki, have been taken into police custody. Apparently, they have diplomatic status in Russia, but no accreditation in Sweden. Also, they allegedly had 230,000 Russian cigarettes.

“If you come to Sweden and commit a crime, you’re just like any other foreign national,” Sweden’s Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Cecilia Julin told Reuters.

What on earth two North Korean diplomats need to smuggle Russian cigarettes from Finland to Sweden for, we have no idea.

[via Reuters]

Man caught with dog inside his luggage

by Katie Hammel on

I’ve traveled with my cats a few times while making some cross country moves. I hated cramming them into squat cages to fit them under my airplane seat and I really hated having to pay a few hundred dollars for their own “tickets” plus the vet checks and paperwork that certified them as healthy enough to fly. But never would I have considered trying to smuggle them on a flight inside my luggage. Yet that’s exactly what a man traveling from Madrid to Dublin did with a small Chihuahua dog.

Somehow the man was able to get the dog, which was in a cage inside his luggage, through security in Madrid. When he got off the plane in Dublin after a 2.5 hour flight, customs officials noticed a strange outline as they X-rayed his bag. They thought it was a stuffed animal until they opened the bag and found the live dog.

The man, who is originally from Bulgaria, has been arrested. The dog was reportedly in fine condition and is being held in quarantine after which, I hope he will be placed in the care of someone with a little more common sense.

[via Telegraph]