By “burnt” I think you mean somebody alerted the authorities to the who, what, where, and when.
But who does that and why? There’d be no reason I can see for the outfit that contracted the mule to burn them. So who’s the rival that has all this good intel and meters it out to the authorities?
Or are many mules essentially freelance arbitrageurs buying anonymously off the street at retail in one country intending to sell the same way in another? But again cui bono from burning this sort of mule?
In this murky area of human behavior it’s especially risky for us to look to rational calculation of risk and benefit as a, much less the, big driver of behavior. Crazy stuff is done for crazy reasons every day.
Multiple reasons and ways. Their confederate who was captured and now urgently needs a deal. The drug dealers rival who knows who the competitions’ mules are and suddenly develops a civic sense. The confidential informants and undercover cops who dealt with you and know your face. You were the sacrificial lamb whose details were leaked to the authorities.
(Remember, mules transfer domestically as well). Internationally it’s almost always the confederate needing a deal and undercover guys.
Will, only if going to SFO. If going to DTW, secondary is all the same.
There have been two times now that the entire plane has been sent through secondary (one time from BJX when there were direct flights, and one time from MEX). It seems to me that these are based on some type of tip and profiling. One time I was returning with some instrumentation that was tie-wrap secured. The officer knew whom he was looking for, and it wasn’t me, because he said, “oh, I think I know what’s in here” and didn’t bother to cut the tie wrap and inspect it. If he knew that it were a weld current meter with pressure transducer, then I’ll be damned!
There are agents that wander around baggage collection asking random questions, too. One time I was waiting around the arrive-from-BJX belt in my cool, leather jacket that made me look like a biker or druggie or something, and the wandering agent asked me if I had any pipes. At the time I was still a bit naive and so I asked something like, “you mean lead pipes, or smoking pipes, or bomb pipes, or something?” (this was pre-9/11). To me the idea of having pipes of any type was completely ludicrous, and so rather than answer the question my instinct was to engage in conversation. The wandering agent left me alone, so I’m wondering if this would be a good tactic for a smuggler.
But then the questions become, “How is a middle-aged housewife affording to travel to X five times this year?” which may trigger questions that lead to story discrepancies, and then she’s bagged.
As others have said, the more ya do it, the worse the odds become.
I have no factual knowledge to share, but I think it’s reasonable to expect that a smart person can probably get away with almost anything if they have enough time to do research and prepare.
To use a movie as an example, look at the way the guys committed the crime in Sneakers. They buy all the e security quipment that the target has, figure out what it takes to defeat it, and practice those methods. Most of the heist doesn’t take place in the target office building, it takes place in their HQ over the course of weeks and months previous to the invasion.
Now give those guys a few billion dollars to work with and they’re not going to be sending a few people through security with drugs in balloons in their stomach. They’re going to have planes with secret compartments that are air tight and a rigorous process for cleaning the outside to remove all scent of drugs, or a train, or a boat, etc. They’ll be shipping it in, in tons, not in pounds.
So really what this tells us is that drug mules aren’t smart, and their bosses aren’t smart. So if most of them are still getting away with it, it’s a reasonable guess that a smart one would slide through super easy… Just, that’s probably not how he would do it.
stuff is done for crazy