This shipment of
bananas donated to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice was ripe for
contraband.
"Sometimes, life gives you lemons.
Sometimes, it gives you bananas. And sometimes, it gives you something you'd
never expect!," posted the department on Facebook.
On Friday, department officers went to pick up
two pallets of donated fruit and quickly discovered something off about the
weight of the boxes.
"One of the sergeants just noticed one of
the boxes didn't seem quite right," Jeremy Desel, department spokesperson, told CNN affiliate KTRK. "[He]
looked a little further, removed that box off one of the pallets, took a look
inside and saw something extraordinarily suspicious."
Within the boxes,
officials discovered 540 packages of cocaine hidden among bundles of bananas.
Police list the value of the drugs at almost $18 million. The donation came
from Port of America in Freeport, Texas, according to the department, though
it's unclear who or when the cocaine entered the shipment.
"There are
several federal entities that are investigating and it's a pretty significant
find for them," said Desel. The DEA and the US Customs and Border
Protection are continuing to investigate, the Texas department said.
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