Work Abroad

I remember sitting around a café in Andalucia, Spain, chatting to a German ex-bank robber. He told me that he knew where to buy cheap hashish and that the Saturday night flight from Gibraltar to London Heathrow was ‘a breeze – no one is ever checked then.’

It sounds pretty obvious when you read it like that but every year people fall for this kind of line. In general the smooth operators choose young women and offer them a free holiday to Thailand or Colombia. On the way back he’ll ask them, if they wouldn’t mind, to carry the odd suitcase with them he’s over his baggage allowance already. Feeling obligated after their great holiday they agree and all over the world these unwitting ‘mules’ are now serving life sentences after getting caught with kilos of heroin.

Often the mules will know what’s going on but they will have been chosen from poor families in the origin country and it’s their one shot at making some money. If they succeed they make a fraction of the profit, provided the operators feel like paying them, and if they fail they go down alone.

Back to Top - Print this page