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Tuesday, September 29, 2009

Drug smugglers nabbed at Philly Int'l

Gulp!

Customs and Border Protection earlier today announced the arrests of two hashish smugglers at Philadelphia International Airport in separate incidents this month.

Officials referred to the smugglers as "swallowers" because they had ingested a combined 1.5 pounds of hashish which had been stored in tiny plastic pellets. The pellets are typically made from latex gloves and condoms.

The first of the swallowing smugglers, Sanchez Smith, 20, was arrested after he arrived at Philly International on Sept. 18 on a flight from Jamaica. He intended to catch another flight to Bermuda, said Steve Sapp, a Customs and Border Protection spokesman.

Smith admitted to Customs officials at the airport that he was a smuggler, Sapp said. Smith spent about a week in a local hospital, where he eventually passed 74 pellets that contained 469.8 grams of hashish, worth about $13,000. Smith was released from the hospital on Saturday and turned over to Pennsylvania State Police, Sapp said.

On Friday, Customs officials arrested another smuggler, Shakai Darrell, 25, at Philly International, Sapp said. Smith had also traveled from Jamaica with the intention of catching a flight to Bermuda. He was released to Philadelphia police on Monday, after he had passed 38 pellets of hash at a local hospital, Sapp said. The pellets weighed 300 grams and were worth about $8,500.

Sapp said investigators believed Smith and Darrell were a part of the same drug smuggling ring.

"It's very difficult to detect [swallowers]," Sapp said. "It's extremely dangerous work. If one of those pellets are breached inside their body, it can end up killing them."
Posted by David Gambacorta @ 6:26 PM  Permalink |
About The PhillyConfidential team

Dana DiFilippo has covered murder, mayhem and miscellany at the Daily News since 2000. She grew up in Delaware County and studied journalism and photography at Penn State University. E-mail tips to difilid@phillynews.com.

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Stephanie Farr has been reporting for the Daily News since 2007, covering everything from gay porn stars who entered the burglary business to moon trees, skinheads, murders and naked bike rides. She covers crime, both in the city and suburbs, and keeps clippings of bizarre Associated Press articles. Her favorite this year was the story about the drunk in Punxsutawney who gave mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a dead opossum. E-mail tips to farrs@phillynews.com.

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Phillip Lucas joined the Daily News crime team in 2011. He grew up on the mean streets of Seattle and studied journalism and psychology at Howard University in Washington, D.C. Before landing in the City of Brotherly Love, Phillip was a reporter for The News Journal in Wilmington, Del. Email tips to lucasp@phillynews.com.

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Morgan Zalot is the newest crime reporter at the Daily News, starting in 2011 after interning at the paper twice as a Temple University journalism student. In her past stints at the DN, she covered just about everything, from drunken Phillies fans to a barber shop in a high school to a grisly murder-suicide. She’s a born-and-raised Philly girl who grew up in the Northeast. E-mail tips to zalotm@philly.com.

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