{"id":115218,"date":"2025-11-03T06:57:10","date_gmt":"2025-11-03T06:57:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/115218\/"},"modified":"2025-11-03T06:57:10","modified_gmt":"2025-11-03T06:57:10","slug":"unsuspecting-workers-find-12-6m-of-cocaine-stashed-in-container","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/115218\/","title":{"rendered":"Unsuspecting workers find $12.6m of cocaine stashed in container"},"content":{"rendered":"

An investigation is underway after workers at an Auckland business discovered 36kg of cocaine \u2013 worth around $12.6 million \u2013 stashed inside a container.<\/p>\n

Detective Senior Sergeant Jason Hunt said staff working at the Auckland premises were unloading legitimate goods shipped from Brazil when the cocaine was discovered.<\/p>\n

“It was in the bags on top of the legitimate product in the container.”<\/p>\n

Police were then contacted, and detectives from the National Organised Crime Group seized the drugs, valued at around $12.6 million.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/p>\n

The container was shipped from Brazil and contained legitimate product, police said. (Source: New Zealand Police)<\/p>\n

Hunt said it was a prime example of a “‘rip on’ or \u2018rip off\u2019 importation to try and sneak drugs into New Zealand\u201d.<\/p>\n

“It\u2019s a common method used by criminal groups where they exploit the bona fide details of a legitimate company\u2019s import.”<\/p>\n

Police said it was now working to locate the criminal syndicate involved in the importation.<\/p>\n

\"Cocaine<\/p>\n

Cocaine was located in these bags, on top of legitimate product, police said. (Source: New Zealand Police)<\/p>\n

Hunt added police would work with overseas law enforcement agencies as part of the investigation.<\/p>\n

“I acknowledge the staff for doing the right thing and it\u2019s great to have this product seized before it reached New Zealand communities.<\/p>\n

“For context, removing this amount of cocaine from the market may have prevented up to $13m worth of social harm to the country.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An investigation is underway after workers at an Auckland business discovered 36kg of cocaine \u2013 worth around $12.6…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":115219,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[51,67,111,43,139,69],"class_list":{"0":"post-115218","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-zealand","8":"tag-auckland","9":"tag-crime-and-justice","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-news","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115218","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=115218"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/115218\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/115219"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=115218"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=115218"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=115218"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}