A trucker was falsely accused of hauling 700 gallons of liquid meth that turned out to just be a mixture of oil and diesel fuel.
Juan Carlos Toscano Guzman was arrested in February and spent six weeks behind bars after being arrested by police in Pharr who alleged he was transporting $10m worth of drugs.
But it turned out the Mexican national, who is a retired oil field worker, was arrested after field tests wrongly identified the substance.
Pharr police had trumpeted the apparent drugs bust following the arrest.
“This massive drug seizure impacts way beyond our region where it was headed,” Chief Andy Harvey said when it happened.
“This stemmed from a patrol officer’s attention to detail when he observed something out of the ordinary and he used our resources to further investigate. This is great policing!”
Pharr police became involved when they saw a group of men pouring a “liquid substance” out of large barrels, and noticed that Mr Guzman’s truck did not have hazard placards.
The officers reported they also noticed “crystalisation” around the barrels and on a hose.
When Pharr police and firefighters tested the substance it read positive for methamphetamine, as it did for Drug Enforcement Agency lab agents when they were called in.
“It’s an enormous amount of drugs,” Mr Guzman’s lawyer, Oscar Vega, told The Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
“These guys were convinced they were on to something huge. But those tests are not reliable.”
And he added: “It was not meth. It was not meth and I tried to explain it to them during the detention hearing, but their tests showed a positive result and so they had enough to detain my client.”
A DEA spokesperson told the newspaper that further testing had exonerated Mr Guzman and that he had been released from custody on 25 March.
