Women caught smuggling drugs in hair weaves

(The Smoking Gun) The suspiciously towering hairdos of two women who had just flown into New York City from Guyana prompted federal agents to conduct searches that revealed each traveler was carrying more than two pounds of cocaine sewn into her weave, according to court records.

After arriving early Sunday morning at John F. Kennedy International Airport on Caribbean Airlines Flight 526 from Guyana, the women appeared fidgety and extremely nervous during routine questioning by Customs and Border Protection (CBP) agents.
In a U.S. District Court affidavit, a federal agent noted that Kiana Howell “appeared as if she was going to faint” and “her carotid artery was pumping.” During a pat-down, an investigator felt “an unusual bulge beneath the defendant’s hair weave.” When asked about the bulge, Howell claimed that it was “part of her hair weave.”
When asked to remove the weave, Howell said that she could not “because she had a package that was sewn into it.” Howell stated that her boyfriend in Guyana “told her to bring that package under her hair weave to the United States for him.”

While claiming that she did not know the package’s contents, Howell admitted, “It was not a good thing.”
Howell’s weave was subsequently dismantled at a medical facility at JFK, where agents removed a rounded package wrapped with clear plastic. Inside was nearly a kilo of cocaine – 996 grams. After Howell’s arrest, she told investigators she had been promised US$7500 to “smuggle the package under her hair weave.”