An alleged drugs smuggler was busted at New York’s JFK Airport after posing as an off-duty Delta Air Lines pilot.
Mario Hudson told border officers at JFK he was a ‘dead-heading crewmember’ complete with Delta uniform, crew bag tags and fake employee ID.
Customs and Border Protection agents became suspicious and a scan of the authentic looking crew bag found five pounds of cocaine.
The cocaine had an estimated street value of about $85,000.
A Jamaican national, Hudson had arrived on a flight from Kingston.
"This seizure demonstrates the vigilance and dedication demonstrated daily by CBP officers at JFK, in keeping these prohibited and dangerous narcotics off the streets of our communities," said Leon Hayward, CBP’s acting director of field operations in New York.
Hudson is facing federal narcotics smuggling charges.
This ‘Catch Me If You Can’ caper is just one example of the increasingly novel ways being used to smuggle drugs through airports.
Just days earlier a dog was used to try to bring in more than $1 million worth of heroin at JFK.
Officers discovered 10 bricks of heroin in a false bottom of the dog’s crate which had arrived as live cargo on an American Airlines flight from Puerto Rico.
Two men were arrested and face up to 20 years in prison.
