Border agents just never know what they’re going to find crammed into people’s undergarments and orifices these days. In January, Customs and Border Protection officers at New York’s JFK Airport apprehended two women from Santo Domingo wearing makeshift adult diapers stuffed with cocaine. Last month, U.S. agents on the Mexican border stopped another woman who had secreted caches of coke and heroin in her vagina.
The latest to play international hide-and-seek are a mother and daughter from Canada who aroused suspicion last Sunday when U.S. officials conducting a random search found $15,000 in undeclared Canadian currency in the older woman’s purse. The two were then subjected to a pat-down, which revealed curious lumps in both their bras. When the garments were removed, agents discovered the bras were padded … with cash: $59,000 in all.
The Detroit Free Press identifies the pair (of women, that is) as Moura El-Asmar, 51, and Jacinta El-Asmar, 18. According to a criminal complaint filed Tuesday in Detroit federal court, the women were en route to Detroit Metro Airport, where they planned to catch a flight for Lebanon to visit family.
The mother told officers that she hid the money because she feared it might be stolen from her. She also said that she didn’t want her boyfriend — who was the driver that day — to know how much money she had. The source of the income, she further maintained, was disability checks and a paper route, and, in her daughter’s case, babysitting.
A background check on the elder El-Asmar shows she had twice been arrested for theft, making her inadmissible for entry into the United States in any case. She was charged with bulk cash smuggling and making false statements to a federal agent. The daughter was not charged.
Related Articles
- Woman busted for smuggling drugs in vagina cops plea
- Women caught at JFK smuggling drugs in makeshift diapers
- UK man who gave cocaine to trick-or-treaters sentenced to community service (Photos)
- Real-life meth dealer named Walter White sought by Alabama police
- People attempt to smuggle animals stuffed in their clothes onto planes
- NY mom arrested for feeding baby cocaine-laced breast milk
- Cocaine and pot found in air over 8 cities in Italy
- Connecticut becomes 17th state to legalize medical marijuana
- 200 thefts per day reported at JFK Airport
- TSA agents confiscate cupcake; possible security threat
- Scientists: Marijuana causes global warming
- Nation’s first marijuana “superstore” opens in Sacramento
- New marijuana soda to enter the marketplace in February
