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36 Pounds of Cocaine Shipped to UN in Hollowed-Out Books, Ray Kelly Says

By DNAinfo Staff on January 27, 2012 1:52pm

Nearly 36 pounds of cocaine arrived at the United Nations Jan. 16, 2012, police said.
Nearly 36 pounds of cocaine arrived at the United Nations Jan. 16, 2012, police said.
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DNAinfo/Olivia Scheck

By Ben Fractenberg and Julie Shapiro

DNAinfo Staff

MIDTOWN EAST — Nearly 36 pounds of cocaine showed up in the United Nations mailroom last week, in an apparent Mexican drug scheme gone awry, police officials said Friday.

The cocaine arrived concealed in hollowed-out books in white bags that had fake United Nations diplomatic patches, which sparked suspicion soon after they arrived at the international body's East 42nd Street headquarters Jan. 16, Police Commissioner Ray Kelly said Friday.

"It was sort of a rough attempt to have these [bags] look like a diplomatic pouch, but diplomatic pouches are not white," Kelly told reporters Friday.

The drugs originated in Mexico City but wound up at a shipping transfer station in Cincinnati, likely via international mailing company DHL, Kelly and NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said.

The bags did not have an address, but since they had a United Nations patch, shipping workers apparently decided to just send them to the UN's headquarters, Browne said.

Investigators believe the drugs' owners in Mexico City put the United Nations patch on the bag so they would avoid detection, not so they would actually be sent to Manhattan.

"There is a belief in investigative circles that [the] drugs were never meant to leave Mexico City," Kelly said. "But somehow, because they were addressed like that, they make it into a shipment mode."