Airline passengers, tourists as drug smugglers - without knowing

Can you imagine traveling as a tourist from Lima Peru to Mexico on a LAN Airline flight with your suitcases full of drugs, but you did not know about it?

Can you imagine you as a major drug smuggler operate under the watchful eyes of currupt officials? Peru's counter-narcotics police broke up a ring that shipped cocaine from Lima's international airport to Mexico on commercial flights by swapping out unsuspecting passengers' luggage with identical suitcases.

The passengers' real bags would be put on later flights.

Peru in 2012 supplanted Colombia as the world's No. 1 cocaine producer, according to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration

The arrest of eight employees at airport services companies through Wednesday followed the April and May detention of five police officers assigned to the airport, also for alleged cocaine smuggling.

The suspects worked for three different concessionaires at Jorge Chavez airport, including Transber SAC, which loads cargo on planes.

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Pilot faces drug charge

Local 2 Investigates has learned new details about a bizarre story we first broke Monday. According to court documents, a commercial airline pilot who swallowed balloons of cocaine to transport from South America to Houston continued to recover Tuesday at Memorial Hermann Northeast Hospital in Houston.

Stanley Rafael Hill, of McKinney, is charged with felony possession of drugs with intent to deliver. A source close to the investigation tells Local 2 shortly before boarding the flight from Colombia, Hill ingested 62 small rubber sacks of cocaine. Hill was traveling as a passenger on a commercial flight; he was not flying the airplane, the source said.

One of the drug sacks burst inside Hill's stomach, according to the source, and Hill himself called for help from a Houston hotel shortly after his flight arrived at Bush Intercontinental Airport. Local 2 Investigates has discovered Hill is a FAA licensed commercial pilot with certification to fly a 737. It remains unclear whether his security clearances could make it easier to smuggle drugs.

There is conflicting information regarding which airline, if any, Hill currently works for. On Tuesday a Houston police officer guarded his hospital room. Hill, 49, is charged with possession with intent to deliver a controlled substance. Bond was set at $500,000.

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