Airport officials were left astounded after discovering a surprising item hidden under a passenger’s toupee.
In a video recently released by Colombian police, airport officers are seen cutting into an unidentified man’s wig to reveal an unexpected find.
The peculiar incident unfolded when the 40-year-old traveller tried to board a flight from Cartagena to the Netherlands. However, he was arrested before he could depart from Rafael Nunez International Airport.
The man raised suspicions during a body scan, which indicated that he was attempting to conceal something in his hair.
Upon cutting into his wig, officers found 19 packets of a substance attached to the underside of the wig. The substance tested positive for cocaine and weighed in at 220 grams (8 ounces), reports the Manchester Evening News.
Authorities estimated its value at over €10,000 (£8,290), leading to the man’s arrest on charges of trafficking, manufacturing, and carrying narcotics, according to the BBC.
Newsweek reported that the video was initially shared by the Colombian newspaper La Opinion. The man seemed resigned to his fate and did not resist as the officer cut into his hair, which appeared to be glued to his real hair and part of his shaved scalp.
However, the man, reportedly from the city of Pereira, covered his eyes with his hand when the officer showed him what had been discovered beneath the faux locks.
After testing the substance with a chemical thought to be cobalt thiocyanate, which turned blue, indicating the presence of cocaine, police swiftly apprehended the suspect.
The authorities released a statement explaining the circumstances, detailing: “During controls carried out by the National Police during boarding of national and international flights, units of the Anti-Narcotics Police caught a Colombian citizen red-handed who was trying to board a flight to Amsterdam (Netherlands), with cocaine capsules camouflaged in a wig.”
They further elaborated on their successful detection efforts: “Thanks to the expertise of the National Police officers, through surveillance and passenger profiling, a person from the city of Pereira (Colombia) was arrested and 19 cocaine capsules were seized, camouflaged in a wig that the individual was wearing (…)”.
Discovering narcotics concealed in unconventional ways at airports is not particularly shocking news. Last month, NewsNation covered a story about a woman detained at Chicago O’Hare International Airport for hiding $238,000 worth of cocaine in her wheelchair.
In another event reported last October, a British individual was captured at a Colombian airport while attempting to sneak aboard a flight with two kilograms of cocaine secreted beneath a sombrero, which at the time, wasn’t being worn but hidden in a special compartment within his luggage.
