Drug cartels are now using hulking drones to smuggle goods over the border
How does a drug smuggler avoid border patrol on the ground? One man figured he'd fly his 13-pound (5.9 kg) haul of meth over the border from Mexico to San Diego by drone.
Police busted the 25-year-old American citizen, Jorge Edwin Rivera, about 2,000 yards (1.83 km) from the border after spotting his drone in flight, authorities said over the weekend.
Authorities recovered the drone as well as the huge drug stash — 13 pounds of meth is worth a reported $46,000 on the streets, said border patrol — in the bust.
Unlike less ambitious operations that have come before this, Rivera was able to rely on a pretty large, professional grade drone for the heavy load, thanks to technology's advancements.
It looks like Rivera used a DJI Matrice 600. That hulking drone, which stands 2 feet (60 cm) in height, is capable of carrying a 33 pound (15.1 kg) load, according to DJI's specs.
And it's huge.
Authorities said that drones haven't traditionally been a popular method for smuggling drugs, mainly because of their small carrying loads. But as improvements in technology make bigger, bolder drones accessible to the everyman, we might see them becoming more viable for drug gangs down the road.
The DJI Matrice 600 has a list price of $5,000 on DJI's website. They're marketed to professional filmmakers who want a hefty drone to carry their big camera rigs for aerial shots.
Just last week, a smaller hobby drone was used to drop off a package containing marijuana, a mobile phone, and a razor blade into a prison yard in Michigan.
This was the third such drone drop discovered by prison officers in the state in the past year alone. In the first two cases, the drones were not recovered, and authorities couldn't trace them back to owners, either.
A Michigan Department of Corrections spokesman said drones have introduced a whole new method of smuggling goods. "[Drone operators] can be miles away. Those are the things that keep us up at night and keep us thinking of new ways to stop them."
Topics Drones
Victoria Ho is Mashable's Asia Editor, based in Singapore. She previously reported on news and tech at The Business Times, TechCrunch and ZDNet. When she isn't writing, she's making music with her band
