LYNWOOD : More Than a Ton of Cocaine Discovered in Truck-Trailer
A truck-trailer that was longer on the outside than it was on the inside led U.S. Customs agents to seize more than a ton of cocaine that had been smuggled in from Mexico.
The seemingly empty 40-foot truck-trailer had aroused suspicions last week at the Otay Mesa border crossing near San Diego when inspectors using a laser range-finder discovered a three-foot discrepancy between the inside and outside measurements of the trailer compartment.
A “density meter” and a drug-sniffing dog heightened the suspicion, and the truck and its driver were kept under surveillance en route to the Los Angeles area.
Agents searched the trailer Saturday after its arrival at a truck yard in the 3000 block of Martin Luther King Boulevard. They found 173 blocks of cocaine hidden in a three-foot deep compartment behind a false wall in the front of the trailer compartment.
The 2,064 pounds of cocaine has an estimated street value of $62 million. Three men, including the driver, were arrested and could face up to life in federal prison for drug trafficking.
Customs agents said it was the second cocaine seizure exceeding a ton in the Los Angeles area in the past three months. In May, customs agents found more than a ton of cocaine hidden in plastic tubing that had been shipped into Los Angeles International Airport from Mexico.
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