Rented Babies Used as Drug Ring Decoys

C H I C A G O, Jan. 29 -- Customs inspectors and federal prosecutors say an international drug ring they uncovered was unlike any other they'd come across. It used babies to help them smuggle in the drugs.

The idea behind the scheme was to place the drugs in cans of baby formula being carried by women traveling with babies. The hope was that customs agents wouldn't search the women and drug-sniffing dogs wouldn't detect the drugs through the cans.

The baby-bearing smugglers flew around the world to bring more than 200 pounds of cocaine and 13 pounds of heroin back home to Chicago. The couriers were paid up to $4,000 a trip. Some also received drugs as payment.

"They were taking the milk out of the formula can, washing the can out and inserting with a hypodermic needle the liquid cocaine into the can, soldering the lid back on," said U.S. Customs agent Pete Darling.

Federal prosecutor Scott Levine said it didn't matter that the coke was watered down, because it would later be turned into crack anyway.

The joint investigation of the Immigration and Customs Enforcement Agency and federal prosecutors began in 1999 and ended last week, when the last of the ring's organizers was sentenced to nine years in prison.

In the two years after the investigation began, 48 defendants pleaded guilty. While the couriers were sentenced to five to 10 years in prison, the parents who rented their babies received sentences that ranged between 10 months and eight years. Only one of the accused stood trial, and was eventually sentenced to life in prison.

Suspicious Custom Agent

The ring started to disintegrate in 1999 when a customs agent in Atlanta noticed that a number of women with babies were visiting family in the military in Panama, but they were not staying near the base. He also noticed that the women were from the same poor section of Chicago. Suspicious, he pulled one of the women aside, looked at her luggage and noticed that the weights of the formula cans did not match the weight indicated on the labels.