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Union City, NJ resident Gabriel Ruiz, 34, was arrested by members of the Maryland Transportation Authority Police Department when investigators called his bluff and seized cocaine that was concealed inside his electric wheelchair at the Baltimore Washington International Thurgood Marshal Airport.
Ruiz was busted on Monday, June 20, and charged with state felony narcotics importation and possession charges on Tuesday, June 21, federal officials announced on Tuesday, June 28.
US Customs and Border Protection officers stopped Ruiz at the Baltimore airport after he arrived from Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic for a secondary examination.
During that exam, officials said that officers x-rayed his Jazzy 614 electric wheelchair and detected anomalies within the seat and back cushions. Officers then probed the cushions and extracted 13 plastic-wrapped bricks that contained a white powdery substance.
Field test kits determined that the white substance was allegedly cocaine.
The 13 cocaine bricks weighed a combined 13.7 kilograms - or 30 pounds and three ounces. The drugs have an estimated street value of nearly $1 million.
Border patrol officers turned Ruiz over to Maryland Transportation Authority Police officers, who levied the charges against him.
“Concealing dangerous drugs inside wheelchair seat cushions is unusual,” Thomas Heffernan, acting Area Port Director for CBP’s Area Port of Baltimore said in a statement.
“Transnational criminal organizations work very hard to conceal their illicit drugs, but this cocaine seizure proves once again that Customs and Border Protection officers are up to the task of protecting our communities by finding the drug gangs’ creatively concealed contraband.”
Ruiz is being prosecuted by the State’s Attorney in Anne Arundel County in Maryland.
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