The Smartest Smugglers In History

from hollowing out trees to flying contraband around with drones and even catapulting cash over the border fence smugglers are coming up with all kinds of sneaky new tricks to fool police and customs officers some of these ideas truly are genius like sewing yourself into the upholstery of your own car but on the other hand some are just a little too ridiculous and as smart as these people thought they were at the end of the day if they got caught they weren't quite smart enough for anyone with even a slight understanding of the world's economic systems you'll know that due to the beauty of supply and demand sometimes one product like a pack of cigarettes could be worth a dollar in one country and a hundred in another over in Ukraine that concept is exactly what a group of creative smugglers tried to take advantage of at the yaga den checkpoint on the border of Ukraine and Poland officers stumbled across one heck of a find 27 tons of timber stuffed with an astounding 25,000 packets of cigarettes the criminals thought to be from Russia had a master plan hollow out a small percentage of the trees and transport them to Germany in the UK 55 trees were tampered with in total what the smugglers didn't count on however was the border officers checking the trees for weight and discovering they're roughly 350 thousand dollar haul when the officials realized that some of the logs were substantially lighter than the others they knew something fishy was going on at the time in Eastern Europe smokes were only a couple of bucks but in the UK where they were destined for they sold for as much as ten dollars that would have been a 500% profit and had they not been caught smuggling objects like cigarettes is one thing sure it's against the law but there isn't necessarily an immediate risk of danger there's a different story though when smuggling live animals spinning the globe and landing in Thailand back in 2010 a woman named paya Wan Palace arn was caught trying to sneak in a real-life living breathing animal in her suitcase and take it with her to Iran any guesses what the animal was a baby lizard a few harmless insects no try a tiger she placed the two-month-old cub in her luggage right next to a kid's stuffed toy version of a tiger in her mind she thought that the customs officers would assume that they had both been plush toys while the bag wasn't moving it sure looked oversize so they gave it a closer inspection and of course something foiled her plan that sneaky effective x-ray machine the airport staff in Bangkok realized that something was out of the ordinary when the woman's so-called stuffed animal had a heartbeat she claimed that she had no idea that tiger was real would you have believed her in the end she was arrested in the cub was sent to a wildlife conservation centre in Bangkok now time to dive into the art of disguise time and time again officials on the border between the United States and Mexico have squandered plans of people daring to sneak into their neighboring country without permission most of the time they get caught because they hide themselves poorly inside of cars or trucks in 2001 this guy a Mexican national by the name of Enrique agua Larkin Chola disguised himself not with a fake mustache or clown costume but believe it or not as a car seat yeah see for yourself folks would this have fooled you well I didn't fool Border Patrol either if they found Enrique and one upholstery covered piece at the San Ysidro border crossing this used to be the busiest border crossing on the planet but we all know why that's no longer the case hands up who loves McDonald's fries yeah that's what I thought now who loves when a bag of Mickey D's fries accidentally contains a whopping $50,000 a little bit more that's essentially what happened back in 2013 when an American man named Rene Becerra Portillo jr. tried to cross the border in Nogales that's right about here well it probably wasn't the best idea in hindsight he decided to wear his McDonald's uniform while he carried around $50,000 in a McDonald's bag just doing their job the border force asked Becerra what he was carrying in the bag and his answer fries he also said he didn't have any money to declare but when they took a look at his paper bag and spotted the stacks of cash you know we're a delicious mouthful of salty fries was supposed to have been they realized that he'd been lying through his teeth why he thought wearing a McDonald's uniform when he wasn't at work would help we'll never know the end result was one federal cash smuggling charge and one very upset Ronald McDonald hopefully none of us will ever have to experience life behind bars but that doesn't mean we can't appreciate a cunning plan to sneak banned items into prison also known as contraband we're talking things like cigarettes alcohol some harder stuff and even weird obsessions like ramen noodles as greatest technology is it's advancements can be used to benefit everyone including criminals all over the world from Australia to Canada England to Wales people have attempted to smuggle things into prison with drones check out this video from 2019 while playing cornhole with some other inmates an inmate at the Cayuga County Jail you could complex in Euclid Ohio had a care package fall from the sky dropped by a drone the delivery featured a cell phone which is of course banned in prison and a few other less family-friendly consumables of course the authorities are quickly getting creative to stop this new method of smuggling researchers in Michigan have designed a drone that catches other unwanted drones with a large net the Netherlands have trained birds of prey to pluck the drones out of the air and that's just the start of it Android users we apologize because this next wacky smuggling attempt is all about iPhones back in January of 2015 Chinese custom officials busted an overzealous angkong man who thought he could successfully sneak a few iPhones into the mainland by strapping them to his body it wasn't just one or two or three though not even ten but a seriously impressive 9 b4 honestly how on earth is there even room for 94 iPhones on a body well I'll tell you by using way too much masking tape and way too many plastic bags and by using every bit of both your torso and legs yeah every bit and he would have gotten away with it too if not for the fact that he couldn't walk straight with all that iOS body armor back then iPhone 6 and 6 pluses were the top of the range then they didn't come cheap from head to toe he was carrying about 61 thousand dollars worth of tech ok quick question for a bit of fun how many phones do you realistically think you could carry without being noticed justify your number and let us know in the comments our next clever smugglers proved that anyone can fall onto the dark side when crossing a land border you don't need to be from a particular area have an old beat-up car or fall within any social status these guys look like you're happy loving everyday family pack they're even kids in the car however as you'll soon see they were up to no good even a couple of small scratches on a car can indicate that there's some shady business going on these officers risked getting into a heap of trouble by actually breaking their family's car with a crowbar had they come up empty-handed it would have been a pretty sticky situation but after dismantling the dashboard of the car from the outside to their relief they uncovered 26 packages of cash it wasn't chump change either no these were 100 dollar bills baby that's one mighty big haul what would you do if he came across that kind of money at this point we'd probably buy a bedazzled hazmat suit anyway see this dude his name is Matthew Cale and his methods of sneaking exotic animals across borders are some of the most unique that we've ever seen after a relatively normal upbringing Matthew became involved in the illegal wildlife trade in which he helped capture rare Turtles for overseas shipments for him this was a Luke of risk people trade reptiles like turtles on the black market and are said to be able to bring in close to six figures doing so we've seen animals in suitcases and it's not unheard of to hide reptiles and pants either but how did Matthew do it generally through one of two ways first by hiding rare turtles in candy wrappers and second by disguising them within socks all up the turtles he transported were collectively worth more than 300 grand according to the US Attorney's Office he ended up being sentenced for a year in prison for his partner reptile smuggling ring that stretched from South Carolina to Hong Kong tam we're heading back to medieval times for our next unique attempt at smuggling things over borders well not necessarily medieval times it was 2011 but certainly medieval tactics if criminals wanted to throw something over a border fence they'd have to get within say 10 or 20 feet right the issue here however is that cars patrol the fence it's not just the crossings that are supervised so how did it cartel manage to fling things over the us-mexico border catapults yeah they'd load up their packages on one side of the fence far enough back so they weren't in direct view of any patrolmen and then launched it over to the other side where their associates would pick it up these machines worked without any power which certainly helped not a lot of outlets in the desert well this sounds like one of the more clever ideas evidently it wasn't clever enough if they had gotten away with it we wouldn't be hearing about it now would we [Music] anyone here been to Niagara Falls a man named Warren Maynard has too but it wasn't a snap a couple of touristy picks you see back in 2008 Maynard a 50 year old fella who hails from Brooklyn had tried to sneak what he referred to as holy water over the u.s. Canadian border and not just one bottle of the stuff either he tried to bring a hundred he claimed that he was returning home after buying some religious items in Canada but even that was enough to raise suspicion and when a customs dog started barking while Maynard was being questioned by officers it proved that there was more than meets the eye after the US Customs and Border Protection officers tested these so-called holy water they discovered that it was something else entirely any guesses it probably didn't get this one a medical animal tranquilizer and powerful hallucinogenic whoops that's all for today friends which of these methods impressed you the most or least anything make you say wow don't forget to Like and subscribe and thanks for checking out the richest we'll see you next time

Channel: TheRichest

Views: 2,214,314

Rating: 4.8082247 out of 5

Keywords: The Richest, smuggling, border security, US customs, Mexico border, prison, American border, hidden money, caught, criminals, airport smuggle, tiger, found

Id: k_btCdOHq0M

Length: 10min 16sec (616 seconds)

Published: Fri Apr 03 2020