Items of Interest: Smuggler’s Blues Edition

This week has been especially interesting week for crime news. I'm always on the lookout for a good crime and a couple of news items caught my attention only because the (alleged) bad guys actually put a little thought and effort into their criminality, which is sadly rare these days. Flipping Your Wig: On Monday, police in Colombia apprehended a 40-year-old man at the Cartagena airport trying to smuggle 220 grams of cocaine packaged in about a dozen small bags as he was trying to board a flight to Amsterdam. While the illicit substance was cleverly concealed, it was revealed to authorities as the suspect walked through a security scanner. The coke was hidden under his toupee.While the drugs were spotted by the scanner, police said in a statement they were already watching him at the airport, due in part to his “considerably nervous” manner, but even more so because his wig was of “disproportionate size.”A video of police cutting off the toupee and revealing the baggies of coke also revealed what is, perhaps, the most galling part of the whole thing. His “five o'clock shadow” shows that, underneath that hairpiece, the suspect clearly has a full head of hair. The Great Train Robbery Reboot: In a considerably more ambitious scheme than drugs in a wig, more than 60 suspects have been charged in federal court for a string of old fashioned, wild west-style train heists in Arizona.Just like in an old western movie, the bandits would target trains in the remote Arizona desert. The bad guys would sneak on board and slash an air hose, bringing the locomotive to a halt in the middle of nowhere. The bandits would then head off into the sunset with their ill-gotten gains.Being the 21st century, there is a modern twist, of course. The goods those train robbers got away with were more than two million dollars worth of Nike shoes.

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