CBP Busts Mexican With $2.5 Million Worth of Fentanyl

A Mexican man, 45, was stopped at the Otay Mesa port in San Diego county last week and U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) seized 190 pounds of nearly 900,000 fentanyl pills worth an estimated $2.5 million.

"Narcotics traffickers will try new and innovative ways to smuggle dangerous drugs across our borders, but CBP officers are always on their toes," Port Director for the Otay Mesa port of entry Rosa Hernandez wrote in a statement. "Thanks to our officers' experience, this interception prevented hundreds of thousands of fentanyl pills from ever reaching our communities."

This trafficker was using the shipping of porcelain sinks as a guise for hiding the pills, according to the news release.

Driving a 2000 Ford cargo van, the Mexican nation presented a valid border crossing card and a shipping manifest for two porcelain sinks, but after a border official sought to inspect the shipment, 189.15 pounds of approximately 858,000 blue pills that tested positive for fentanyl with an estimated street value of $2,574,000.

The San Diego county Otay Mesa port imaging system picked up "anomalies within the shipment" and a canine detection team alerted concerns about the sinks, where 12 packages of the fentanyl pills were discovered.

CBP officers seized the shipment, cargo van, and fentanyl pills, and turned the driver over to Homeland Security Investigations for further processing, according to the release.

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