Cocaine shipped to a toilet factory...
Cocaine load traced to Colombia
LOUDONVILLE -- The 23 pounds of cocaine and heroin that showed up Friday at a Mansfield Plumbing Products warehouse appeared to do so accidentally.
The drugs, which had a street value between $800,000 and $1 million, have been traced to Colombia, South America, by Loudonville police. Mansfield Plumbing Products was bought two years ago by Organizacion Corona SA, a privately owned sanitary company based in Colombia.
According to a news release from Loudonville police, the container with nine packages wrapped in plastic and foil was loaded and sealed in Colombia. The seal had an identification number documented on a shipping receipt.
The container arrived in the United States on Feb. 24, went to Columbus by railcar on March 1 and to Loudonville by trailer last Friday.
Mansfield Plumbing Products notified police about a suspicious bag in the container. The seal taken off the container had the same number on shipping papers, showing the container had not been opened from the time it left Colombia until to reached Loudonville, according to the news release.
Police have concluded the bag should have been removed from the container at some point when it reached the United States and before it went to Loudonville.
Police credited Mansfield Plumbing Products for its cooperation.
"Mansfield has a policy of 100 percent cooperation with U.S. customs in the interdiction of contraband, and we notified them of this situation Friday," a company news release read. "We intend to continue offering our full cooperation with them and all the other authorities involved in this ongoing investigation.
"We go to great lengths and take extraordinary precautions to avoid this type of situation from occurring. We are a participant in the Business Anti-Smuggling Coalition. ... Unfortunately, in this instance, the safeguards in place were circumvented once the container left our secure manufacturing facility.
"This breach has caused us to initiate our own voluntary audit of how this occurred in order to develop the additional safeguards required to protect future shipments."
http://www.mansfieldnewsjournal.com/...603080313/1002
