Texas prison guards peer in box of bananas — and find $18 million in cocaine

Two pallets of bananas donated to a Texas prison on Friday were worth nearly $18 million — but that’s because the pallets held more than just bananas, authorities said.

Prison guards from the Scott Unit of the prison system went to pick up the pallets in the morning from Ports of America in Freeport, according to a Facebook post on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice page. Ports of America was giving the bananas away because they had ripened too soon.

But the two sergeants who were dispatched for the pickup noticed something odd: There was a box that stuck out from the rest.

The sergeants cut the straps to grab the box, and then opened it. Bananas were inside — but underneath the banana bundle was a bundle of “a white powdery substance,” authorities said.

The sergeants alerted port officials right away.

It was cocaine, tests revealed. Customs agents rooted through all 45 banana boxes and found even more cocaine.

All told, there were 540 packages of the drug hidden among the bananas, which authorities said would be worth about $17.8 million on the street.

U.S. Customs and the Drug Enforcement Administration are now investigating, the state’s department of criminal justice said.