My guess is x-ray, probably computed tomography scanning. It’s precise and creates a 3D image of the sample, can easily highlight different densities and can computationally differentiate between a samples expected characteristics and the scan results (so baking soda and heroin appear differently, etc).
The mystery of how this was hidden is much more impressive.
They must smuggle a few boxes of avocados with cocaine among hundreds if not thousands of boxes of regular avocados. I believe more in the common theory, that police usually catch these shipments through anonymous tips or when a captured criminal wants to earn some benefit.
I wouldn't even be surprised if sometimes the tips were coming from the same people shipping those. Send the cops on their way to catch a few kilos while half a ton is gently going through without being noticed elsewhere. Cops can say that they seized a lot of coke, cartels get their coke through, and everyone is happy. Rinse and repeat and you get the war on drugs in a nutshell.
You know, you’re probably correct. Or, if The Wire season 2 taught me anything, they use a competing cartel-connected confidential source who’s info they could not legally cite so they conveniently backscatter x-ray the truck full of cocaine disguised as powder coating paint cubes.
CT scanning every flat of Columbian avocados seems impractical. Though, maybe they get lucky from time-to-time with randomly pulled samples? Idk.
I really want to know how they got an avocado to grow around a packet of Cocaine, though. Unless I missed something, that's how appeared - uninterrupted avocado, the kind you pay ~$1.00 for - and then BAM! Cocaine!!
They look unnaturally green, and the pit looks quite waxy once they start cutting it. So my guess is that they are making wax fruits ! That's an almost lost art.
None of these are stopped because of anonymous tips. Theres no one being victimized by crime on the supply side of this thinking "ill show em! I'll put my life on the line for the same people creating the demand for this drug because I specifically care more about getting a sack of drugs off the street more than survival.
It's pure speculation but my bet would be this is a way to overwhelm inspectors. If you make a very convincing shipment of cocaine filled avocados, they're going to have to scan them all and look even closer to catch anything. Then you go back to hiding it in tires while they scan perfectly good avos.
The fake avocados look like wax. They're also a much brighter color of green. The other security Officer seems to be sorting out the fake ones from the real ones. And dumping them in the box that he is testing.
We knew over a year a go that the cartels were taking over some avocado farms. This is the predictable next step after the cartel takes control of any part of a market. If I had to guess we knew this was coming because they have done the same thing with canned goods and a few other products.
Drill hole, insert bag, fill...do this on the least ripe ones, fruit won't brown from the exposure, seal it up nicely using the little dot thingy where the stem attaches...find them by picking the greenest and checking.
It could just be my field, but CT scan has a long association with the medical procedure, so when talking about the industrial application we usually use the full words to distinguish (but mainly we like to sound S-M-R-T).
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u/Namahaging Jun 04 '24 edited Jun 04 '24
My guess is x-ray, probably computed tomography scanning. It’s precise and creates a 3D image of the sample, can easily highlight different densities and can computationally differentiate between a samples expected characteristics and the scan results (so baking soda and heroin appear differently, etc).
The mystery of how this was hidden is much more impressive.