Customs officers seize 800 pounds of pot at San Luis port

FROM STAFF REPORTS

June 9, 2008 - 6:46PM

Customs and Border Protection officers seized 872 pounds of marijuana in recent days as they stopped four separate attempts to smuggle pot through the U.S. Port of Entry at San Luis, Ariz.

The marijuana had a total street value of $1.4 million, CBP said in a news release.

In what CBP is calling the most creative of the four smuggling attempts, 187 packages of marijuana were encased in cement picnic table tops and benches that a 44-year-old U.S. citizen was bringing across in a vehicle on Saturday.

Officers became suspicious of the unidentified man and referred the vehicle to a secondary inspection area, where use of an X-ray system enabled agents to locate the pot weighing a total of 534 pounds, CBP said in the release. The man was arrested.

In a separate incident Thursday, officers arrested a 32-year-old unidentified man
from Mexico and seized more than 105 pounds of marijuana that had been hidden throughout the vehicle he drove up to the port, CBP said.

The pot, contained in 61 packages, was seized after a narcotics detector dog alerted officers to the presence of drugs.

Two other seizures came May 31, CBP said.