The Coast Guard found more than $37 million worth of cocaine aboard a small boat off the Pacific coast of Mexico, according to U.S. Customs and Border Protection.
CBP’s Air and Marine Operations officers spotted a fast-moving vessel in international waters near Acapulco on Aug. 19 and alerted a nearby Coast Guard ship.
Federal law enforcement officers believed the boat might be attempting to smuggle drugs from Central or South America to the United States.
The ship intervened and found 2,880 pounds of cocaine inside the little boat and arrested six people on board. If sold on the street in the U.S., the cocaine would have been worth $37.5 million, CBP said.
Robert Blanchard, director of National Air Security Operations Center in Jacksonville, Fla., said in a statement the bust was the result of partnerships between federal agencies to work together to detect and respond to transnational criminal activity before “nefarious actors and contraband” reach local communities.
The amount of cocaine seized in this incident was approximately a hundredth of the amount seized in all of CBP’s air and marine operations in fiscal year 2017: 269,790 pounds, according to government data.
