'Operation Toupee': Police Nab Man With $48K Cocaine Under Wig
A Colombian man has been arrested at Barcelona airport with half a kilo of cocaine hidden under his wig.
The "considerably nervous" man attracted the attention of police after he arrived at Bogota airport in late June with a sizeable lump on his skull, concealed by a wig.
When they asked him to remove the toupee from his head, officers allegedly uncovered a perfectly sealed packaged filled with 503 grams of cocaine glued to his head.
The arrest, labelled "Operation Toupee" by local police, netted AU$48,480 worth of the drug.
“There is no limit to the inventiveness of drug traffickers trying to mock controls,” police said in a statement, which included two mugshots of the middle-aged man, who was still wearing the bulging wig.
It's unclear if he is still being detained.
Drug busts are common in Spain as it is one of the main European points of entry for Colombian cocaine.
More than 100kg of the drug was seized at the Barcelona-El Prat Airport in 2018.
It's not the first time smugglers have used wigs either.
In 2015, a woman was arrested at an airport in Madrid with 900 grams of cocaine sew into her wig, while in 2012, two women were caught with close to two kilograms of the drug beneath their hairpieces and weaves in New York.
They were trying to smuggle the haul through John F. Kennedy Aiport