Controlled Delivery Busts Foreign Group Smuggling 230 kg of Meth in Waste Materials
Case Files of Narcotics G-men (5)
Former narcotics officer Ryōji Takahama (77) of the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, who was on the front lines of drug investigations from the Shōwa to the Heisei era. He is also a living witness to history, possessing firsthand knowledge of how drug-related crimes have evolved over time. This is the fifth installment of his series detailing the realities of drug smuggling crackdowns.
Illegal drugs are smuggled into the country using four different methods
Drugs smuggled into Japan from overseas are still entering the country in large quantities and in more sophisticated ways. The four main methods are offshore trade, commercial cargo, mobile importation, and international mail.
The offshore trade is also called seizure. There are two ways to do this: a carrier ship bringing drugs and a collection ship receiving the drugs make contact at sea using a GPS (Global Positioning System) and receive the drugs from the other party on the spot. In the other method, the carrier dumps the waterproofed drugs at sea, attached to a buoy, at a predetermined location, and after leaving the location, the collection vessel pulls up the drugs drifting in the waves. Both methods are then unloaded at a small local port where customs and police are less vigilant.
The method of dumping the drugs on buoys sometimes failed in the days when GPS was not available. Incidents of methamphetamine that were missed and washed up on the beach sometimes made the headlines.
When I was working in the Kyushu office, I received information about a large amount of methamphetamine smuggling from a person who was in the center of a gangster organization. He told me that this gang, which is located in Kyushu, was conducting this seizure off the coast of Kyushu, such as off the coast of Tsushima, and landing large quantities of methamphetamine in small fishing ports.
Once the methamphetamine was brought to Kyushu, it was transported overland to the Kanto region, where it was spread throughout the country from a branch of that gang in Tokyo. Although the information was not concrete and the case was not exposed, it was one of the most effective ways to systematically spread methamphetamine throughout the country, and it was not improbable.
Controlled delivery investigations, introduced in 1997
Smuggling by commercial cargo using containerized cargo, etc., continues to take place and has been detected. Drugs were smuggled by modifying parts of containers, such as walls, to conceal them, or by concealing or mixing drugs with imported fish, seafood, or luxury furniture.
In June 1987, the Tokai-Hokuriku District Narcotics Control Office uncovered a case of smuggling approximately 80 kg of methamphetamine through Taiwanese routes, where the methamphetamine was cleverly concealed in cardboard boxes of imported frozen octopus. For this case, DEA officers from the Kanto Shinetsu District and Kinki District were dispatched to the area to support the investigation. I was also a member of the team and played a role in the investigation.
In the past, it took about two hours per container to remove all the cargo from the containers in order to stop such smuggling. This was revolutionarily improved by the introduction of a large X-ray inspection system, which was first introduced at the Port of Yokohama in 2001. With this equipment, containers could be inspected in about 10 minutes, and it could also be used for automobiles and small boats in addition to containers.
During my second stint at the Kinki District Narcotics Control Office, where I worked from October 1999 to March 2004, I became friends with the Osaka Customs people because of the good relationship my colleagues had established with the Osaka Customs prosecution department, and we were able to conduct several cases each year thereafter. We conducted several controlled delivery investigations jointly every year.
A controlled delivery investigation is a method of investigation in which drugs are not seized on the spot at customs, but are instead distributed as they are, and the person who finally appears at the delivery destination is identified and arrested.
To cite a recent example of a controlled delivery investigation, in July 2004, Kanagawa Prefectural Police Headquarters and Yokohama Customs seized approximately 230 kg of methamphetamine from a container arriving at the Port of Yokohama from Mexico, and arrested three people, including a Brazilian man living in Japan. The methamphetamine was in the form of block fragments and other scrap metal. The methamphetamine was packed in large quantities in pipes interspersed with pieces of blocks and other scrap wood. Prefectural police swapped the methamphetamine for salt and conducted a controlled delivery search to uncover it.
In December 2012, after my retirement, an elite team led by Mr. Harumi Seto, Director of the Narcotics Control Department of the Kanto Shinetsu Health and Welfare Bureau, discovered and seized a large quantity of methamphetamine, 108 kg, hidden in a road roller from Vietnam. The case began with a tip from the Australian Federal Police, and the road roller was subsequently checked using a large X-ray machine at customs, and the methamphetamine was replaced with glacial sugar in a clean controlled delivery (CCD) search, which eventually led to the arrest of five people from the U.S., Canada, and even Vietnam who showed up to pick up the methamphetamine. Five Vietnamese nationals were arrested.
Mr. Seto is the author of the book “Matri,” published in Reiwa 2020. He is 10 years my junior and was assigned as an intelligence officer in the Kinki District Narcotics Control Office, to which I belonged. Unlike me, he has an outstanding investigative sense and has used his innate intelligence-gathering abilities to uncover numerous drug crimes, making him one or two of the best agents in the Drug Enforcement Division. During my working years, no one could match him.
The shotgun method, where one person is intentionally used as bait
The third method of smuggling is portable importation. This is another method of drug importation that is still used today. This method includes, for example, cases in which approximately 9 kg of marijuana resin and 11,000 MDMA tablets were hidden in double-bottomed suitcases, and 2.9 kg of methamphetamine was smuggled in from Mexico in six shampoo bottles. In another case, a total of 15 kg of methamphetamine and 4 kg of cocaine were hidden in the bottom of a suitcase belonging to four passengers on the same flight.
This method of smuggling illicit drugs by distributing them at the same time is a new technique known as the shotgun method. The method involves using a number of foreign tourists on a budget group tour as couriers to get through the inspection net, or one of them intentionally makes it so that he or she will be detected by the customs officials, and while his or her attention is focused on that person, the remaining members quickly clear customs.
Behind the scenes, X-ray machines, drug-sniffing dogs, and even illicit drug detection equipment have been used to great effect. This illicit drug and explosive detection equipment (TDS) did not exist when I was on active duty. The main feature of this equipment is that it can detect the cargo to be inspected in a short time without destroying it. The surfaces of commercial cargo, passengers’ personal effects, and international mail were wiped with a non-woven cloth, and the drug particles on the surface were ionized and analyzed by mass spectrometry, enabling the detection of concealed illicit drugs.
A specific example of its use can be seen when an attempted smuggler packs drugs into a double-bottomed suitcase, touching its exterior or opening and closing its zipper with hands that have trace amounts of drugs on them. In doing so, there is a possibility that a miniscule amount of powder, which is invisible to the eye, may adhere to the bag. This was a revolutionary device that used this point to reveal the concealment of illicit drugs.
[Part Two] “Even a Female Exchange Student Enchanted by the Allure of Marijuana. The Cunning Tactics of Drug Smugglers Trying to Cross Borders by Any Means”
