A New Twist on Divers and Drugs

Forget the speedboat for smuggling drugs. Now trafficking rings are using divers to get their stashes across international lines. A bust in June that nabbed eight traffickers and a ton of hashish on Spain’s Costa del Sol uncovered the new method.

A group aiming to import drugs into southern Spain from Morocco brought waterproofed drug bundles by boat to positions near the coastal town of Estepona and dropped them to the seabed. The bundles were placed at pre-arranged spots, usually in 65 feet of water, and buoyed. When they got the all-clear to recover the bundles, teams of divers with jetskis went out to the sites. The divers descended and brought the bundles to the surface, and the drugs were taken aboard the jetskis for landing. When Spanish authorities caught on and made the arrests, 1,500 pounds of hashish still lay on the seabed off Estepona’s Saladillo beach, awaiting retrieval.