Drug dealers are always looking for ingenious ways to get their products past checkpoints, and sometimes they exhibit some truly outside-the-box thinking.
The attention of Italian customs officers at Malpensa Airport was recently drawn by a small package from Colombia to a man named Santino D’Antonio. If you’re not an action flick buff, that name most likely means nothing to you, but if you’re a fan of John Wick movies starring Keanu Reeves, you probably recognize it as the name of the mafia boss and main antagonist in John Wick 2. Luckily, the officers recognized the name, and decided to inspect the package more thoroughly…
Inside the packaging was a 2-kilogram bag of fine Colombian coffee beans, one of the South-American country’s main exports. There was nothing suspicious about the contents at first glance, but a closer look revealed that some of the beans had slightly darker spots. After opening the bags for closer inspection, the officers of the Fiamme Gialle di Malpensa realized that those darker spots were discrete bits of adhesive tape.
After removing the making take, airport police officers discovered that the coffee beans had been meticulously hollowed out and filled with white powder which turned out to be pure cocaine. Out of the roughly 500 beans in the package, 130 of them turned out to contain the expensive drug.
After making the discovery, officers proceeded to apprehend Santino D’Antonio, who turned out to be a criminal in real life as well as in the movie. The address on the package turned out to be that of a tobacco and coffee shop in the province of Florence, the owner of which didn’t seem to know anything about any coffee from Colombia. However, after keeping an eye on the place for a few days, Santino turned up to pick up the package.
Unlike the elegantly-dressed mafia boss depicted in John Wick 2, the real-life Santino D’Antonio turned out to be a 50-year-old casually-dressed man who arrived at the tobacco shop on his bike. He was picked up by police the moment he asked for his package and taken into custody. It turned out he was a resident of Medellin and had a past riddled with drug charges.
