The 7 Most Ingenious (And Insane) Smuggling Techniques | Cracked.com

The 7 Most Ingenious (And Insane) Smuggling Techniques | Cracked.com

I used to live and work in Naples, Florida. My boss was headquartered in Miami, so I had to drive across the Alligator Alley for staff meetings. In order to arrive in time for an 8 o'clock meeting in Hialeah, I had to drive the deserted Alley through the Everglades in the early morning darkness. It was not uncommon to see towing crews moving small planes off the road. Drug smugglers used the untrafficked road for a landing strip. It was something like 80 miles long with nary a bend. They'd land, stuff the coke into an innocent family car driven by an accomplice (women are excellent for this), and abandon some little $20,000 plane by pushing it off into the swamp. That amount was an insignificant factor in multi-million dollar shipments. I suppose they could have done the same with pontoon boats, using the entire Everglades as their landing strip. Ah, the seventies in Florida. I was fortunate never to have actually crossed the path of any of those pilots, because I'm guessing that they didn't like witnesses.

The one thing I learned from that is how difficult it is to defend the Florida borders. All that coastline ... all those swamps.