How many bites does it take to get to the center of a chocolate cocaine bar?
The world may never know.
U.S. customs officials seized more than 4 pounds of cocaine hidden inside chocolate bars and drink boxes at Washington Dulles International Airport.
A Guatemalan woman arrived on a flight from El Salvador, presenting herself as a courier on business, officials said.
During an inspection of her baggage, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers found the chocolate bars, which looked real but felt unusual, said CBP spokesman Robert Hunt. The officer cut one open, and found a bar of cocaine wrapped in plastic, covered in chocolate.
“From the outside, it looks like genuine chocolate,” Hunt said. “So it took a vigilant officer performing a thorough inspection to discover this.”
Customs officers discovered eight chocolate bars, six of which contained a cocaine center, and six small drink boxes that contained plastic bags filled with cocaine. The street value of the chocolate cocaine was about $130,000, authorities said.
Authorities determined that the woman worked for a legitimate courier. She was not charged, but immigration officials canceled her visa, and put her on the next plane to El Salvador, Hunt said. The woman faces a five-year ban from returning to the United States.
Smuggling through couriers who land at Dulles is a growing concern because of the number of direct flights from high-trafficking areas like Africa and Latin America, officials say.
Dulles and Baltimore/Washington International Thurgood Marshall Airport have been the site of several unusual smugglings in recent years.
CBP officers and drug-sniffing dogs have detected cocaine-filled clams, bed posts and statues of Jesus, Mary and Joseph.
Other smugglers packed drugs into cheese, stuffed a chicken with cocaine, hid heroin in suitcases and taped marijuana to magazines.
Last month, authorities arrested a Nigerian woman who ingested 180 pellets or nearly 5 pounds of heroin, the largest amount of heroin ever found at a D.C.-area airport.
In fiscal 2011, CBP officers at Dulles seized more than 50 pounds of cocaine, 52 pounds of heroin and less than a pound of marijuana.
