A Colombian man was detained at Barcelona’s international airport after half a kilo of cocaine was found hidden under an oversized toupee, Spanish police said yesterday.
Arriving on a flight from Bogota, the man attracted police attention as he looked nervous and had a disproportionately large hairpiece under his hat.
They found a “perfectly sealed” package stuck to his head which contained 503 grammes of cocaine, worth more than £28,000.
“There is no limit to the inventiveness of drug traffickers trying to mock controls,” said a police statement.
The statement enclosed a photograph of a middle-aged man – apparently still wearing the toupee though with his eyes blocked in the image – but gave no more details of his identity.
More than 100 kilos of cocaine were seized by Spanish police at the Barcelona-El Prat airport in 2018.
The Colombian was detained at the end of June in what police have dubbed “Operation Toupee”.
Spain is an important gateway for cocaine to Europe, mainly from Colombia, because of its language links.
Smugglers often resort to creative methods to get drugs past Spanish customs.
Police have previously found cocaine inside breast implants, hollowed-out pineapples, a wheelchair cushion, a plaster cast encasing a man’s broken leg, and a 42-piece crockery set.
