In a video released by Colombian police, an officer could be seen cutting into the 40-year-old passenger’s hair with a pair of scissors before they made a surprising discovery
Airport officials were left gobsmacked after discovering what was hidden under a passenger’s toupee.
In an eyebrow-raising video, recently released by Colombian police, airport officers can be seen slicing 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, but was arrested before he could depart from Rafael Nunez International Airport.
The man came under suspicion after a body scan indicated he was trying to conceal something in his hair.
Upon cutting into his hair with scissors, they unearthed 19 packets of a substance stuck 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 valued the haul at over €10,000 (£8,290), leading to the suspect’s arrest on charges of trafficking, manufacturing and carrying narcotic substances, according to the BBC.
Newsweek reports that the video was first shared by the Colombian paper La Opinion on X. The man seemed resigned to his fate and didn’t 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.
The officer carried out a test on the suspected drug using a chemical believed to be cobalt thiocyanate, which turned blue, confirming their suspicions and leading to the man’s arrest.
In an official release, the police explained: “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 clarified the arrest: “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 (…)”.
This latest incident at the airport is just one attempt at inventive drug concealment. In a report last month by NewsNation, it was revealed that a woman at Chicago O’Hare International Airport was nabbed when she attempted to smuggle $238,000 worth of cocaine in her wheelchair.
Adding to the series of bizarre smuggling techniques, last October, news broke of a British national detained in a Colombian airport for attempting to board a flight while concealing two kilos of cocaine under a sombrero, ingeniously hidden not atop his head, but within a secret section of his luggage.