The war on drugs is a stupid one, but one that continues despite the fact that it doesn't really seem to matter how much money the US government throws at the campaign, drugs are still readily available just about everywhere. This is because there is just so much money in the industry - some would argue it is more profitable than just about any other industry.
Smugglers have to get more and more creative with how they get drugs into the country and in one of these busts, I am actually quite impressed with the ingenuity of the smugglers and also with the efficiency of drug-sniffing dogs.
The way they tried to pull it off was that they made a Jesus statue out of plaster but inside the mold was mostly cocaine. The statue weighed nearly 7 lbs but it contained nearly 5 lbs of booger sugar.
This is the actual statue in question. The first one was just a silly picture that is frequently used in memes and I like it.
For the statue their tactics included a very intricate paint job as well and none of the drug was exposed. The statue was also not hollow and I would imagine that the idea was to smash Jesus on the other side in order to get the coke out.
None of the drug was exposed but the drug dogs were still able to tell that it was there, which is very impressive to me that they can smell through cement.
The woman who was transporting the statue claims that she was approached by a man in his 60's and asked if she would transport it across the border to his very devout mother who would be waiting on the other side. He claimed he did not have a visa and could not get into the United States. Police later tracked down this man and arrested him but the driver of the car fled back to Mexico, which leads me to believe that she was probably in on it to begin with. Either that or she realizes that the law was unlikely to be on her side even if she was telling the truth.
The "mother" that was meant to be waiting for the statue on the other side was never found. I think we can safely presume that this person wasn't actually real and there was just some members of a gang that would follow the car and retrieve the statue.
This makes me wonder how many operations like this are actually successful though because the US / Mexico border is a very busy one and the officials likely don't have enough time to be this thorough with everyone who is going through.
5 pounds is more than 2000 grams and the street value of one gram is around $100. That would have been a big payday for Jesus had he been successful!
