Dilip Kuner
IT sounded like the ultimate wellness hack for the high-flying elite – a smoothie that could fuel a finance bro’s 3am club cameo AND his 6am gym session.
But Spanish authorities have juiced the dream, uncovering a cocaine lab in Valencia where criminals were extracting cocaine base hidden inside drums of frozen guava pulp – perhaps the ultimate fruit smoothie for a certain type of health conscious junkie.
In a sting operation codenamed ‘I. Amable/Sunka/Zafra’ (which frankly sounds like a niche juice bar), police and customs agents dismantled a narco network capable of ‘cooking’ up 30 kilos of cocaine a day.
Police suspicions were raided when shipments of industrial drums of tropical fruit, imported through a legit-looking food company, were paid for by a man who had oodles of cash despite apparently living off unemployment benefits.
Investigators discovered that cocaine base paste had been smuggled inside the pulp and shipped to Valencia as frozen cargo.
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A surveillance operation was put in place, which spotted that most of the drums were then sent on their legitimate way from a cold store warehouse to other refrigerated facilities.
But several of the drums were sent to rural chalets and simply dumped in the blazing sun for days – the ‘cold food process chain’ totally forgotten.
Cops moved in and the fruity cover was peeled back. The narcos would chemically extract the cocaine in makeshift jungle labs with 15-ton presses, industrial mixers, and branding moulds for that ‘premium product’ finish.
Raids across eight towns led to the arrest of 25 suspects, including Colombians, Spaniards, Albanians, and one smooth operator nabbed at El Prat Airport.
Along with 38 kilos of cocaine base and 7 kilos of refined coke, authorities seized fake euros, firearms, chemical precursors, five flash motors, and enough phones to run a small call centre and a backup.
The only people sad to see this operation shut down are probably a few nightclub promoters, ad execs, and tech bros who thought they’d finally found the perfect post-yoga pick-me-up.
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