Airline passenger arrested after 200 lizards discovered hidden in 22 pairs of socks
A 23-year-old traveller has been arrested at inside an airport after customs officers allegedly found around 200 live lizards hidden in his suitcase, stuffed into 22 pairs of socks
Authorities allegedly uncovered around 200 live lizards crammed into a suitcase(Image: Getty Images/500px Prime)
A traveller has been arrested at a Tokyo airport after authorities allegedly uncovered around 200 live lizards crammed into his suitcase – with many of them stuffed inside socks.
Mexican national Daniel Isaac Velasco Baltazar, 23, was reportedly arrested at Tokyo’s Haneda Airport on August 8, after flying in from South Korea. Customs officials reportedly opened his luggage and made the grim discovery of 22 pairs of socks packed with reptiles.
One of the animals was already dead by the time officers unzipped the case. Japanese police are said to have been waiting for him after an anonymous tip in late July warned that a Mexican man was planning to smuggle reptiles into the country to sell at a local Japanese reptile exhibition and sales market.
Customs officials reportedly opened his luggage and made a grim discovery(Image: Getty Images)
Officials then reportedly pulled the suspect aside for a manual inspection after landing. During the search, officers noticed an unusual bulge inside a folded T-shirt.
Moreover, inside the T-shirt, they found the socks stuffed with lizards, Fox News reported. Among the haul were said to be rare Mexican alligator lizards, also known as arboreal alligator lizards, a protected species covered by international wildlife trade rules under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora (CITES).
Investigators believe the motive was money, HK WORLD -JAPAN reported. The suspect allegedly told police he bought the lizards in Mexico for as little as $3.50 to $5 each (about £2.70 to £3.90) – but thought he could sell rare specimens in Japan for up to $630 each (about £490), or 100,000 yen.
One of the animals was already dead by the time officers unzipped the case(Image: Getty Images/iStockphoto)
“If there’s a market for it, people will attempt to smuggle it,” Security expert Keith Jeffries, vice president of K2 Security Screening Group and a former federal security director at Los Angeles International Airport, told Fox News Digital. He added: “We’ve seen this before many times.
“It happens more frequently than any of us would like.” This comes after a Brit mum caught smuggling over £500,000 worth of Thai cannabis into the UK inside her suitcases bragged on Facebook that she was “on her way home to cut the grass”.
Amy Jayne Durban had stuffed her luggage full of 51.2kg of the illegal substance on a flight back home from Thailand, the Daily Star previously reported. The 45-year-old’s goods reportedly had street value of around £512,000.
She was greeted by border force after arriving back in the UK on July 6. Durban, from Hemyock in Devon, was the centre of a National Crime Agency investigation and was arrested in Heathrow Airport after jetting in from Bangkok.
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