Mexican smugglers use toy car to sneak $100,000 in meth into California, officials say

A 16-year-old boy stopped early Sunday on the border with Mexico near San Diego ended up tipping U.S. Border Patrol agents to an inventive, if tedious, method of sneaking drugs into the United States, an agency press release says.

The teen had a radio-control toy car, which had been used to send 56 pounds of methamphetamine valued at $106,000 over the border, the agency says.

Agents spotted the teen carrying two duffel bags and trying to stay out of sight along a border wall at 12:30 a.m., according to the release.

The boy ducked into some brush, but an agent spotted him, finding the toy car and 50 packages of meth in the duffel bags.

The incident took place about a mile west of the Otay Mesa crossing, KSWB reported. Agents say it would have taken “multiple trips” to move the drugs across using the small toy car. They think someone on the Mexico side was controlling the toy vehicle.

Border Patrol agents broke up a similar operation in 2017 using a radio-control drone to move drugs over the border, the agency’s press release says.

Jorge Rivera, 25, was later sentenced to 12 years in prison for his role in the airborne-smuggling scheme, an earlier Border Patrol release says.

This story was originally published November 19, 2019 at 3:37 PM with the headline "Mexican smugglers use toy car to sneak $100,000 in meth into California, officials say."