Louisiana police bust huge plot to deliver drugs by drones to prisons across the US

Among all the cases of drones deployed to deliver drugs and other contraband into prisons around the globe that DroneDJ has reported over the months, the plot busted by Louisiana police this month is one of the largest and most audacious of those aerial criminal enterprises.

Cops in Grant Parish, Louisiana, announced they’d crashed the enormous prison drug delivery scheme before it could even get off the ground earlier this month. It began when a traffic stop discovered the car’s occupants were transporting an estimated $1,286,500 in narcotics. Louisiana officers also found two Autel Robotics Evo II Pro drones, eight cell phones, and several replacement batteries.

The intent behind the somewhat bizarre mix of dope and drones quickly became clear, when inquisitive police also found what Grant Paris Sheriff Steven McCain described as “a list of seven different facilities in the United States they were supposed to go to and drop off drugs.” 

What tipped deputies off to what otherwise might have been the undetected cross-country plan to deliver drugs into prisons with drones? 

For starters, the car stopped had been driving very slowly around the only penitentiary in the area at the unlikely leisure touring hour of 1 a.m. Meanwhile, an officer approaching the car was met with a strong odor of marijuana – apparently the smokable equivalent of the “angel’s share” from the $1,500 in pot discovered inside.

Also stockpiled  as part of the US prison drone delivery strategem: an estimated $1 million in sheets of paper soaked with hallucinogenic K2, $4,000 in THC wax, and $10,000 of the opioid addiction treatment Suboxone.

A second suspect was soon apprehended in possession of heroin, crack cocaine, and other drugs destined other designated penitentiaries. Two other alleged accomplices sought by police in the case turned themselves in this week.

According to McCain, the plan was to use the craft and multiple backup batteries to drop drugs stuffed inside soda cans into prison grounds during what was conceived as a wide-ranging road trip to selected US jails. A phone text message displayed by the Grant Parish Sheriff’s Office detailed the facilities and kinds of narcotics to be delivered to each one.

“These (cans) were filled with drugs,” McCain said, while displaying the various aerial, pharmaceutical, and beverage materials seized. “This drone has an actuator on there, (and) the operator pushes a button on the remote control and releases the package… They had a very, very specific list of what was supposed to be dropped at every location.”

As fate would have it, the drone plan to smuggle drugs into US clinks was discovered only a month after a new Louisiana law came into force strengthening prohibitions against introducing contraband into jails – including banned items inside like cell phones that are perfectly legal outside.