MEXICAN DRUG SMUGGLERS USING CLONED VEHICLES TO TRANSPORT DRUGS

On June 7 I posted POT SMUGGLERS CAUGHT IN ARIZONA USING TRUCK WITH FAKE U.S. FISH AND WILDLIFE SERVICE DECALS about the Border Patrol in Arizona seizing 3,200 pounds of pot being transported in a truck with fake decals that had crossed the border from Mexico into the U.S. after the smugglers had pulled up a section of the border security fence. The cloning of trucks to make them appear to be government or private business vehicles has been going on for some time.

In one instance the smugglers used a cloned school bus filled with mannequins and stuffed with a large number of marijuana bales. The mannequins made it look like the bus was just transporting some well-behaved students.

DRUG TRAFFICKERS’ LATEST TRICK: “CLONE” VEHICLES

CBS News
June 11, 2014

When Tucson Border Patrol agents seized a truck last week, the decals from the "U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service" looked spot-on. But In its flatbed, they found marijuana, in bundles, worth $1.6 million, reports CBS News correspondent Anna Werner.

It's what they call a "clone" or faked vehicle.

The story starts back in 2007, as a police officer in the little town of George West, Texas, attempted to pull over what looked like a Texas Department of Transportation or "Tex-Dot" truck.

To the casual observer, Officer Jorge Medina said it looked "just like a typical Tex-Dot truck, from the exempt plates to the stickers, the insignia."

But the license plate belonged to a school district, so Medina stopped it.

"As I walked up to the truck, they took off," Medina said.

He gave chase, until the driver lost control and the truck spun out.

"It had flipped over, and there's black bundles scattered all over," he said. In the bundles, was nearly a ton of marijuana.

Since then, law enforcement officials in south Texas, like Sheriff T. Michael O'Connor of Victoria County, have been on the lookout, and he's seen an impressive range of cloned vehicles.

"If you can think of it and name it, we have stopped it," O'Connor said.

Traffickers will seemingly fake any vehicle to transport their drugs; a cloned AT&T service truck, a UPS semi-truck, a Halliburton tanker that didn't really contain oil at all, a Wal-Mart distribution truck, Direct TV and FedEx trucks, even police cars and school buses.

"Some of [the fakes] are excellent," O'Connor said.

Police cannot say how many cloned vehicles there are on the road, but correct spelling is essential for those who don't want to be caught -- one of the trucks was labeled "Border Patron."