Two men in India have been caught and arrested for trying to smuggle gold under their toupees, and that is not the only odd place the pair had hidden over $400,000 in the precious metal.
Authorities reportedly noticed that the two men had “highly unusual hairstyles” as they approached an exit to Chennai International Airport in India on March 21. When security officials searched the suspects, they discovered the two men were wearing wigs.
According to reports, underneath the hairpieces were gold paste packets weighing 1.5 pounds. The packets had apparently been glued to the suspects’ heads, who then attempted to hide them under the toupees. When the suspects were completely searched, authorities discovered additional pieces of gold, cash, and other illicit items hidden “throughout their bodies.” Gold was reportedly discovered in their socks, underpants, and even in their rectums.
The two men, identified as Magroob Akbarali and Zubair Hassan Rafiyutheen, were arrested while still in the terminal. They had reportedly just arrived from Dubai. Authorities seized gold and cash worth an estimated $382,943.
Other Very Weird Finds at Airports
It may seem quite bizarre to find men trying to smuggle gold through an airport under a toupee and secreted within certain body cavities. However, gold is certainly not the strangest thing airport authorities have found and have had to confiscate.
According to Fox News, the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) recently published a list of its top 10 “good catches” of 2020, in which it detailed some of the weird and, in some cases, very dangerous prohibited items that its officers detected throughout the year.
Among the top 10 things confiscated from travelers, TSA officers caught passengers carrying weapons, including a slingshot (#10) and a book containing concealed knives (#9), as well as a few “flashier” prohibited items like a bundle of roman candles (#8) and a smoke grenade (#7).
But that’s when the list takes a turn for the weird, as TSA officers apparently had to confiscate a dead baby shark (doo doo doo) from a passenger that was floating in a chemical preservative that was flammable and too dangerous for air travel (#6).
You can see the TSA’s complete Top 10 Good Catches list in this YouTube video.
But perhaps one of the most bizarre cases occurred in England in 2010, when a woman and her adult daughter were arrested after trying to board a plane from Liverpool to Berlin with the woman’s recently deceased 91-year-old husband. The women had placed the corpse in a wheelchair and covered his eyes with sunglasses. Upon discovery, they said they thought he was just asleep.
I wonder if the In-Flight movie was “Weekend at Bernie’s?”