If you’ve watched any show about border security, you’ll know that drugs are a big deal for countries. And in post 9/11 with heightened security, so much has been invested in preventing the importation of drugs in the most covert of ways. Specifically in human beings.
Know, watching Australia Border Force, I would be tempted to think ‘Only an idiot would try and smuggle drugs. You’ll almost certainly get caught.’ However thinking carefully this seems like observation bias. You don’t hear about drug dealers who didn’t get caught by customs agents because they didn’t get caught.
Drug mules who smuggle internally get caught by either: 1) sniffer dogs 2) inconsistent profile which triggers a drug swab.
There’s a saying that ‘appearances can be deceiving’ and customs will check anyone but realistically that’s B.S. Almost all of the people caught with drugs young, old, black, white, male, female, had a sketchy profile and character. They always give away something with their lack of knowledge about travel and just piss poor appearance amplified by a preconceived notion about race, gender or age.
So my assumption is that assuming you can concoct a reasonable story for your journey into another country and fit a normal character profile, why can’t you get away with it. Hoping that sniffer dogs don’t smell your bags?
It’s unlikely that “smart” and “drug mule” often combine. The safer ways to smuggle drugs involve either 1) bypassing customs e.g.: tunnels, submarines or 2) passing off the drugs as ordinary postal packaging/commercial shipping while relying on plausible deniability/sending it to a third party and intercepting it.
Then there’s the option of paying someone to take the risk for you and being threatening enough that they won’t inform law enforcement if arrested. Given that this pretty much means being involved in very violent organized crime, I’m not sure I’d call it smart.
You know, maybe we should be nice to the newbies? Our job is to fight ignorance, not increase smugness.
To answer OP’s question, unless they have been setup or the Cops have information, an average drug mules chances of getting caught for individual trips are pretty slim. However for a persistant mule the chance of eventually getting caught are fairly high.
I thought this was going to be a question about drug mules escaping with their illicit Contraband and not giving them to the drug dealers that they were supposed to bring it to in the first place.
No…That’s about the dumbest thing a drug mule could do after passing the border. You have to remember that the drug kingpins are usually involved in violent crime. Even the charming ‘pretty boy’ small guys have intimidating muscular guys when giving instructions to the mules ('Locked Up Abroad’show has examples).
If a mule is tempted enough to sell the drugs to someone on the streets instead of delivering it, they could possibly get away back to your home country. But they’ll find you…if not you, your family.
Sorry if you found that inappropriate, but unless someone here is an actual drug mule, how are we supposed to answer this question? But I’ll take a stab at finding and posting some pertinent information:
This NBC News article, while mostly about people smuggling drugs in vehicles or simply carrying them over the border, indicates only 5-10% of all smugglers are caught.
Here’s an article about smugglers using “decoys” set up to get caught and cause a distraction while others slipped through.
So it would seem there are many varied strategies, and most of them are implemented by the people running the smuggling operation and not the actual mules themselves, who may well be getting caught or set up to get caught intentionally as a distraction while larger quantities are smuggled through elsewhere.
I would say you’re much more likely to get away with it if you can actually explain why you’re headed from point A to point B in a common sense, consistent manner. I’ve seen the same border show you’ve mentioned, along with some others, and the people who ping the radar of the customs agents can’t explain where they’re going or why they want to go there. They’ve put no thought into it, as they’re not the reason for the trip – someone’s paying them to go. Their thought process seems to be along the lines of 'I’ll just say I’m visiting a friend," but didn’t think of a) the friend’s name, b) where the friend lives, c) what the friend does for a living, d) what he’ll do while he’s there. So when customs agent Bob asks those questions, the mule hems and haws and thinks up some answers, when the customs agent Bill asks the same questions, the answers are different. Now customs is suspicious and will give him a harder look, which makes the mule even more nervous and his answers more nonsensical, and he gets caught.
10 minutes spend on Wikipedia and Hotels.com and one could come up with a story on why you’re visiting a city, get reservations at a hotel, and your cover is now a lot more solid. The smart ones give it some thought like this and get through. The smart ones also probably don’t do it for long, as they realize the odds of a random search (or someone back home snitches and tips off customs) will someday catch up to you.
I did remember seeing an episode where an absolutely stupid African guy came to their attention simply because he somehow wandered in the wrong area of customs after arriving off a flight. He had a package in his groin but he had cleared immigration.
In other words, just be normal. Off topic though, It’s kind of ironic that suicide bombers are more calm than drug mules. I suppose terrorists fear nothing where drug mules fear getting caught.
As a general matter, most crimes aren’t solved. Most criminals, even stupid ones, get away with it. What gets almost all of them in the end is repetition.
If you’re a really crappy mule you’ve got a WAG 30% chance of success, 70% chance of getting caught. You might succeed once. But you’ve only got a 9% chance of succeeding twice. And only a 2.7% chance of succeeding 3 times.
He’s busted.
A really skillful mule might be able to have a 90% one-time odds of success instead of a 30% one-time odds of success. Huge improvement, right? Not really.
After 7 trips he’s down to 43% odds of still being unarrested. 10 trips? 34% chance he’s still undetected. 15 trips = 20%.
Damn good bet he’s busted too.
So the real trick is to A) be skillful and B) quit after only a handful of trips.
How do you develop skill when you can’t practice? Sure you can avoid stupid shit like Patch just explained. After that, what works? Who do you learn from?
The more success you have, the more you’re likely to persuade yourself that you’re good at this, that it’s easy. Meanwhile the odds are inexorably closing in on you. Soon enough those two curves cross and you too are out of the mule business.
There’s always the option of getting caught and learning from other prisoners but then, you’re not exactly learning from the best.
I don’t know if it’s been mentioned yet but aside from the compounding effect of probabilities, a drug mule has an unappealing choice to make: Since on-person throughput is rather low for most drugs, if they make a few trips over the years, it won’t bring in that much money. If they do make many trips over a few years, that itself will likely get them flagged for more scrutiny. If you’re a clean-cut middle-aged person working for a well-established company, that scrutiny won’t be a problem but I don’t think most drug mules can pass the smell test as a frequent (legal) business flyer.
Common sense tells us many things about smuggling drugs. 1. it’s obviously profitable considering drugs are still getting into the country. 2. Records show us that smugglers are getting caught quite often.
Conclusion: Enough people get away with it.
You can lose 90% of your drugs and still be profitable. Like $10-30 billion dollars in income for the Cartel’s profitable.
When I arrived at SFO from BKK, the passport-checker interviewed me briefly and always sent me to Station 3 (heroin smugglers). Except one time I was carrying some flowers I’d received at BKK airport — that time I was directed to Station 6 (agricultural inspection). … So bring some flowers along with your heroin! :rolleyes:
I frequently travel between Grand Cayman and Colombia. Overseas banking heaven to drug country.
Yeah, I get the full deal treatment quite often. Coming and going. X-rays, bag linings cut to inspect, sealed packages of coffee opened. The works. And that is just my bags.
I know the way to the back rooms in Colombian airports where they have the full body scanners. The federal police don’t think it is cute when I offer to lead the way.
Get to the airport 3 hours early and it still might be cutting it close to have enough time to be poked and prodded.
And, of course, I am a legal traveler and can answer any and all questions about my intentions and have documents to back up my story. Yet they are so keyed to profiling that I am sure others slip through that don’t meet their profile for a suspicious person.
Just about right. It’s not just being a good drug mule it’s being one who does not stand out and give the fuzz an excuse to stop you. A foreign male student is going to get stopped regularly as is a member of a downtrodden minority. A middle class housewife? Unless she has been burnt, never. Even if she appears way too buxom for her frame.
Of course for a dealer far more of the former than the latter will be available.
From my experience defending, around half are caught during routine stops and the other half are burnt.
