Marijuana bust at California Border last week (Photo : CNN)
US customs officers crossing at a California border confiscated more than 15 tons of marijuana inside a tractor-trailer shipment set to be a cargo of mattresses. The officials said that it was the biggest bust at that port of entry.
The confiscated narcotics were in a plastic-wrapped packages, with a street value of almost $19 million. The 15-ton stash was found on Thursday stacked from floor to ceiling inside the truck at the Otay Mesa cargo port in San Diego, according to the US Customs and Border Protection Agency.
The tractor-trailer was subjected into suspicion after it has undergone x-ray examination which detected and the "anomaly" in the vehicle. This led the customs and border officers to inspect the truck thoroughly, the CBP said in a statement.
The shipment was wrapped nearly in 1,300 packages weighing about 31,958 pounds, which was spotted by the officers in an instant, according to Huffington Post. When the officers opened the trailer door, the supposedly shipment of cargo mattresses only contained a few signs of beddings which were stacked along the wall, parallel to the doors.
The driver who was a 46-year-old Mexican citizen with a valid border-crossing card was then immediately turned over to US immigration agents.
The confiscated pot marks the record of the greatest amount of illegal drugs ever impounded at Otay Mesa-which is one of the three ports of entry in the Sand Diego-Tijuana border area. The recent bust is also the second largest in the United States, according to the Customs and Border Protection.
Number one on the list is the seizure of 35,265 pounds of pot in 2013 at California's Calexico East port of entry, just across the border from Mexicali, Mexico.
