Federal authorities say they have apprehended a woman who ingested the largest amount of heroin ever found in a smuggler arrested at a D.C.-area airport.
Bola Adebisi had ingested 180 heroin pellets that weighed nearly five pounds when she was taken into custody last week after arriving at Washington Dulles International Airport on a flight from Nigeria, according to court records and Customs and Border Protection officials.
The 52-year-old Nigerian woman was charged in federal court in Alexandria with attempting to import heroin. In a statement, CBP officials called the drug seizure the largest of “any ingested concealment method” for the port of Washington, D.C.
“The amount of pellets and heroin this woman ingested is incredible, a serious health risk and very troubling if these numbers become the new normal,” D.C. port director Christopher Hess said in the statement.
During a secondary inspection after flying into Dulles on March 14, Adebisi gave CBP officers an incomplete entry form that did not list a U.S. address, according to a criminal complaint. She told the officers she was staying with her brother, but could not provide an address, phone number or physical description of him, the complaint says.
An officer noted that her stomach was “abnormally rigid” and she agreed to go to Reston Hospital Center for x-rays, the complaint says.
The x-rays detected the pellets in her abdomen. In total, she ingested 180 thumb-sized pellets that weighed 2,157 grams — or 4 pounds, 12 ounces — according it CBP. Authorities said the heroin had an estimated street value of $150,000.
Before her arrest, the largest such heroin seizure in the D.C. area was the about four pounds of heroin swallowed by 46-year-old Yomade Aborishade, who was taken into custody at Dulles last March. He pleaded guilty in June.
On Monday, Adebisi was ordered to remain in custody pending a preliminary hearing scheduled for Thursday.
