Rob E Dangerously 0 Report post Posted August 17, 2002 from Yahoo.. Cocaine-filled suitcase bought at auction Sat Aug 17,12:33 AM ET CALGARY, Alberta (Reuters) - A Canadian man has paid less than a dollar (65 pence) for a used suitcase at an auction house only to find when he got home that it was crammed with nearly 5 kilograms (11 pounds) of cocaine with a street value of over 100,000 pounds. Now, investigators in Calgary -- calling the seizure of the crack and powder-form cocaine one of the western city's biggest ever -- are trying to find out where the baggage came from, and who is missing the drugs. "It would be nice if they phoned and said, 'Hey that's really mine.' But that's not likely to happen," Staff Sgt. Roger Chaffin of the Calgary Police drug unit said. "I imagine the people who the money's owed to really don't care about why he abandoned it -- it's abandoned and there's a price to pay for that. "In the organised crime world that would be a significant debt." The Calgary resident bought the carry-on size luggage along with several other items at a local auction house on Thursday, Chaffin said. He contacted police after he opened the bag to find a hard substance separated into 158 small bags, later determined to be crack for street sale. Another 1 kilogram (2.2 lb) block of powdered coke was also inside. The find had a street value of C$280,000 (117,104 pounds), police said. Police were not identifying the man who bought the suitcase, or the auction house, while they tried to track the bag back to its original owner. "Obviously they felt enough peril of one sort or another that the risk of losing it was better than the consequences they were facing at the time," Chaffin said. ` Share this post Link to post Share on other sites
