Amazon parcels of ornamental garden stones were in fact used to smuggle meth across the world, it's been revealed.
Federal agents said that criminals were piggy-backing on the online retailer’s global shipping network to send methamphetamines, hidden inside orders of decorative rocks.
The rocks are commonly used in gardens and model railways, but one such package was intercepted at an Amazon Fulfilment Centre in San Diego, which feds believed contained the drugs.
Since then, Homeland Security Investigations (HSI) and Amazon have rumbled five vendor accounts exploiting the mammoth company to move narcotics across the globe.
HSI said that the unknown drug smugglers were using Amazon to send “kilogram quantities of controlled substances destined for international sale”.
Only two packages have been seized so far as authorities begin to scratch the surface of the network.
Both parcels were “bulk controlled substances”. One was intercepted on October 28, in Louisville, Kentucky, before it could make its way to Australia - and it contained five kilograms of meth.
Then, three days later on Halloween, Amazon and HSI agents in Michigan inspected a suspicious parcel in Michigan claiming to contain preowned slate stone for toy railways and garden pots.
It contained almost six kilograms of meth.
Earlier this month on November 8, a police sniffer dog named ‘Blue’ discovered the odours of meth, cocaine, and heroin on a package from one of the suspect accounts.
The search warrant discovered by Forbes was for this parcel, and police wait for approval to open it and carry out tests to figure out if it’s meth or other drugs.
Court documents reportedly didn’t shed any more light on the individuals or gang behind the shipments.
However, this isn’t the first time Amazon parcels turned out to contain illegal drugs.
In 2020, a customer in Glendale, California received a parcel containing opioids, such as oxycodone and morphine.
Last year in India, Amazon executives were summoned by police after an investigation into a site allegedly smuggling 1,000kg of weed masquerading as a natural food sweetener.
HSI has been approached for comment.
