Narcotics Hidden in Coffee Bags | To Catch a Smuggler

[Airplane roars]

WOMAN ON INTERCOM: Welcome to Hartfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport. We're looking through the LOB, left over bags that passengers left out there for whatever reason. When passengers leave bags, we gotta go through them, make sure there's nothing illegal.

OFFICER AMADOR: Depending on the day, you can get about 30, 40 LOBs. They are the people that are in a hurry, and they think they're going to miss the flight, and they'd rather leave the bag behind. Or the reason we check, the person might not want to get caught bringing something and leave the bag behind.

OFFICER MAINOR: When I go through the bags, I try and be methodical. I try not to overlook anything. [Bags rustling] Coffee beans. I can't really see inside it. I'mma have to cut it open. Got a coffee smell, but we'll see what we got. [Suspense music] Coffee is supposed to be brown, right?

OFFICER MAINOR: Coffee is not supposed to be white. [Theme music] Now we just cut open the rest and see. And again. Oh, wow. OK. Try not to get too high or too low because you know you got to test it. But when you start seeing the same thing, you're like, oh, OK. That's not the norm.

OFFICER SMILEY: No, he didn't.

MALE 2: Oh, yes he did. [Chuckles]

OFFICER SMILEY: So this was inside the coffee?

OFFICER MAINOR: Mm-hm.

OFFICER SMILEY: Gotcha. So do they look, like, commercially packaged?

OFFICER MAINOR: Yeah. It looked legit because see how it's stitched? Sometimes you just can't skip steps. It's that simple. It's that easy. So now we're going to test it and see what we have.

MALE 3: What do you think?

OFFICER MAINOR: Mm-hm. [Suspense music] Hold on. It's hot.

MALE 3: There you go. It's reading cocaine hydrochloride, so that's cocaine. It's just straight cocaine. No mixture, no nothing else. You know, it's a good day.

OFFICER SMILEY: Nice catch. [Music playing]

OFFICER MAINOR: 3.51 kilos. Yeah. That's a lot. Since I've been here, this is one of the largest ones we've had. That's over a year and a half.