Crooks With Drone Busted Trying To Smuggle Porn And Drugs Into Prison

Crooks With Drone Busted Trying To Smuggle Porn And Drugs Into Prison

Unmanned aerial vehicles often get a bum rap for being technological troublemakers, and this story ain’t gonna help: Maryland State Police say they have arrested two men who supposedly planned to smuggle contraband into a state prison using a drone.

The Baltimore Sun reports that, along with the drone, CDs loaded with porn were confiscated, as was synthetic marijuana, and a handgun. Quite the payload. The suspects were found in a vehicle Saturday night on a road off of US 220, near the Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland, Maryland. The bust was part of an ongoing investigation into the perps. Authorities suspected they were planning to deliver contraband goods to an inmate at the complex. Turns out, they were right, and it goes to show law enforcement might actually be able to keep pace with this fast-growing tech.

According to The Washington Post, authorities say the gun was unlikely to be part of the planned cargo, since the drone can only carry around eight ounces. An inmate at Western Correctional is believed to be connected and has been charged, as well.

“You can’t make this stuff up,” Stephen T. Moyer, secretary of the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, said in a press conference Monday. He also said that outfitting a prison with a drone detection system could cost upwards to $US400,000.

This isn’t the first time drones have been used for illegal prison special deliveries, either. Earlier this month, a fight broke out in an Ohio prison after a drone dropped drugs into the facility. CNN reports that tobacco, marijuana, and even heroin all managed to reach inmates. Officers were forced to diffuse the situation with pepper spray. Last year, a drone crashed near a South Carolina prison, and was found to be toting cell phones, tobacco and pot. Saturday’s incident marks the first time such a plot was discovered in Maryland, however.

Why would an inmate fly the coop, when the comforts of home will fly to them?

[Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services via The Baltimore Sun and Washington Post]

Picture: Maryland DPSCS


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