Spanish police collared a group of fruit loving drug smugglers who stuffed cocaine into dozens of hollowed-out pineapples to try and avoid detection.
The fruits – containing 148 pounds of coke — were found at the Mercamadrid, a wholesale fruit and vegetable market in Madrid, where they arrived from Costa Rica via the Portuguese port of Setubal, Agence France-Presse reported.
Each pineapple was “perfectly hollowed out and stuffed with compact cylinders” containing the drug and was coated with wax or yellow paraffin to conceal the “odors of the chemical products which the drug contains and avoid its detection,” police said in a statement.
Seven suspects were arrested – three in Madrid and four in Barcelona – in connection with the smuggling ring.
Spain is the main entry point to Europe for cocaine from South America, mostly from Colombia, and smugglers often turn to creative means to get drugs past customs officials.
In recent years, authorities have located cocaine inside some over large but yet incredibly soft breast implants, a wig that smelled like a bagel and smoked salmon, a wheelchair cushion, a plaster cast encasing a man’s broken leg as well as inside a 42-piece crockery set.
