Drugs in the Mail

October 5, 2018 Crime , Opinion , OPINION/NEWS , OTHER

FDA photo

By

Ricardo Swire

Evidence highlighted the United States Postal Service’s vulnerabilities and role as a main player in that country’s burgeoned opioid crisis. Similar high value drugs have also transited mail systems in Peru and Ecuador. In 2005 Peru’s Postal Service found its first “drug package” moving through the facility among the five thousand international parcels screened daily by three X-Ray machines. In the first five months of 2012 Peruvian Postal Service inspectors found sixty kilos of cocaine in parcels destined for Spain.

International drug distributers have utilized the US Postal Service to deliver fentanyl and other synthetic opioids. Not long ago a US Department of Homeland Security (DHS)/Immigration & Customs Enforcement Agency (ICE) sting closed down one transnational drug trafficking network that moved narcotics from Rio Grande, Puerto Rico (PR) to the US. Since 2010 local law enforcers monitored the trafficking syndicate’s operation. The network sourced and retailed wholesale quantities of cocaine, crack and marijuana to distributors on PR’s north coast.

ICE reports verified the traffickers partnered with Colombian and Mexican cartels. A September 18, 2018 Puerto Rican Grand Jury indictment described how the syndicate’s members used US Postal Service facilities to mail and receive contraband from continental distributors. Recruited US Postal Services employees safeguarded such packages of controlled substances for collection by the trafficking network’s representatives. Conspirators included rogue police officers who leaked confidential information about associated investigations.

The outfit also smuggled guns and ammunition, plus offered money laundering services. Shipments of heroin and marijuana were sent via the US Postal Service from Mexico to California. In Mexico one discovered trafficker’s technique was to utilize private trucks disguised with similar logo to the country’s public postal service. Contracted high-speed watercraft transported cocaine consignments from Colombia through the US Virgin Islands.

Generally the South Florida police have intercepted unusually high amounts of marijuana and prescription drugs in public commercial mail services. In 2009 and 2010 thirty-seven pounds of cocaine were intercepted each year, compared to forty-four pounds in the first half of 2011. The marijuana packages averaged between twenty and thirty pounds. Cocaine was concealed in one and two pound parcels. Such scenarios framed the possibility US traffickers may have found a favoured transport route via Miramar city Broward County, Florida.