Colombian caught in Spain with cocaine under toupee

[July 16, 2019]    MADRID (Reuters) - A Colombian man was detained at Barcelona's international airport after half a kilo of cocaine was found hidden under an over-sized toupee, Spanish police said on Tuesday.

Arriving on a flight from Bogota, the man attracted police attention as he looked nervous and had a disproportionately large hairpiece under his hat. They found a package stuck to his head with about 30,000 euros ($34,000) of cocaine.

A man poses with a toupee with a drug package under it after being arrested in Barcelona, Spain, in this picture released on July 16, 2019. Spanish National Police via REUTERS

"There is no limit to the inventiveness of drug traffickers trying to mock controls," said the police statement.

The statement enclosed a photo of a middle-aged man - apparently still wearing the toupee though with his eyes blocked in the image - but gave no more details of his identity.

Over 100 kilos of cocaine were seized by Spanish police at the Barcelona-El Prat airport in 2018.

The Colombian was detained at the end of June.

($1 = 0.8894 euros)

(Reporting by Sarah Dagher; Editing by Paul Day and Andrew Cawthorne)

[© 2019 Thomson Reuters. All rights reserved.]

Copyright 2019 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.  Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content.