After a flight from Paris, France to Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam Airlines last Thursday, four flight attendants were arrested for allegedly smuggling drugs during the usual routine of security clearance check.
The cabin crew thought it wouldn’t be suspicious to pack toothpaste tubes with 25kg’s of ecstasy, cocaine and ketamine but obviously thought wrong. During the search, custom officers found more than 150 tubes of toothpaste packed with illicit drugs.
According to Jalopnik, three flight attendants and one cabin manager were caught trying to transport 154 toothpaste tubes, 112 of those tubes were filled with grey tablets, which weighed a total of 8kg’s including the weight of the packaging, the balance 42 toothpaste tubes were stuffed with white powder weighing 3kg’s total.
According to the flight attendants, they were paid $424, or 10 million Vietnamese dong (RM1884.75) to transport some goods to Vietnam. Offences such as these are brutally dealt with in Vietnam as it will lead to life in prison, or even a death penalty.
Based on the report, the flight attendants were new employees for the Vietnamese airline with more or less a year’s experience. It was said that the customs officials were actually tipped off about the alleged smuggling scheme and law enforcement hoped to capture the alleged traffickers as they picked up the cargo at the airport, but no one had arrived to collect the luggage.
