French cops find 8kg of ecstasy in tins of pickles
Drugs smugglers ended up in a pickle in France this month when customs agents searched their car and found nearly 27,000 ecstasy tablets smugglers hid in 13 cans of gherkins. It may sound like a joke, but it didn't end up that way for the two suspects.
Two smugglers made it into France with the cache of pills, but their luck ran out at a toll station in Fresnes-Les-Montauban, which isn’t far from the border with Belgium.
Customs agents stopped their car on October 7th and rapidly found 13 cans of pickles, which must have seemed like an awful lot of "cornichons" to police.
The officers decided to crack open the cans, which revealed the bags full of 26,740 ecstasy pills, according to French customs. The 7.8 kilos of drugs were worth an estimated €200,000.
(Here are the "pickles" seized by police. Photo: Douanes Françaises)
Both men chose to go before a judge for immediate sentencing and on October 13th they got 24 and 30 months respectively behind bars. They also each got slapped with €11,200 in fines.
Customs officers have had a string of interesting seizures in the past couple months, including a shipment of a defective inflatable crocodiles.
“Because of their dangerous and non-conforming character, these articles have been destroyed,” a customs spokesman said at the time.
And then this summer as football fever gripped the planet, French customs officers seized 30 knock off World Cup trophies that enterprising counterfeiters had tried to get to market in France.
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Two smugglers made it into France with the cache of pills, but their luck ran out at a toll station in Fresnes-Les-Montauban, which isn’t far from the border with Belgium.
Customs agents stopped their car on October 7th and rapidly found 13 cans of pickles, which must have seemed like an awful lot of "cornichons" to police.
The officers decided to crack open the cans, which revealed the bags full of 26,740 ecstasy pills, according to French customs. The 7.8 kilos of drugs were worth an estimated €200,000.
(Here are the "pickles" seized by police. Photo: Douanes Françaises)
Both men chose to go before a judge for immediate sentencing and on October 13th they got 24 and 30 months respectively behind bars. They also each got slapped with €11,200 in fines.
Customs officers have had a string of interesting seizures in the past couple months, including a shipment of a defective inflatable crocodiles.
“Because of their dangerous and non-conforming character, these articles have been destroyed,” a customs spokesman said at the time.
And then this summer as football fever gripped the planet, French customs officers seized 30 knock off World Cup trophies that enterprising counterfeiters had tried to get to market in France.
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