Smugglers clone FedEx and Border Patrol vans

Clever smugglers are cloning FedEx, WalMart, Department of Transport and even US Border Patrol vans, filling them with dope, people, and cash, and driving 'em around with near impunity:

Savvy criminals are using some of the country's most credible logos, including FedEx, Wal-Mart, DirecTV and the U.S. Border Patrol, to create fake trucks to smuggle drugs, money and illegal aliens across the border, according to a report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement...

A fake U.S. Border Patrol van was found to be carrying 31 illegal aliens in Casa Grande, Ariz. An alert agent recognized that the "H" in the van's serial number is a letter used only on U.S. Border Patrol Jeep Wranglers. It should have been a "P."

Link (via Kottke)

[#1 posted by Stefan Jones , January 25, 2008 12:38 PM]

Now trucks and vans will have to be built with a shiny anti-counterfeiting strip. And corporate logos will have to be changed every couple of years.

[#2 posted by mrfitz , January 25, 2008 1:08 PM]

Simpler just to implant everyone with self-destructing rfid chips...

[#3 posted by Stefan Jones , January 25, 2008 1:14 PM]

Or maybe law enforcement personnel can get some kind of special symbol, like a magical lens or something.

[#4 posted by angryhippo , January 25, 2008 1:30 PM]

"It should have been a "P."

Congrats on telling them how to fix that without forcing them to do any research.

[#5 posted by Jardine , January 25, 2008 1:54 PM]

Does Florida have a large problem with vans driving across their international border?

[#6 posted by zuzu , January 25, 2008 1:57 PM]

"It should have been a "P."

Congrats on telling them how to fix that without forcing them to do any research.

Because you think free movement of people and goods is a problem?

Besides, Bruce Schneier has written plenty on how credentials provide a dangerous sense of false-security. The more that people rely on credentials, the better that would-be criminals will be in forging them.

[#7 posted by Takuan , January 25, 2008 1:57 PM]

yeah, the Democratic Socialist People's Republic of Georgia keeps sending migrant workers

[#8 posted by Santa's Knee , January 25, 2008 1:59 PM]

@#5:

Yes, from New Orleans.

[#9 posted by angryhippo , January 25, 2008 2:38 PM]

@#6:

Nope, my post was much more simplistic. I was just noting the funny in telling coyotes how to tweak their operation in order to once again fly under the radar. No grandiose statements on immigration or security.

Sometimes a “point and laugh” is just that.

[#10 posted by Bryan C , January 25, 2008 3:51 PM]

I can see how the fake Border Patrol vans might work, and even the Fed Ex trucks. But do Direct TV and Walmart trucks drive back and forth across the border so routinely that no one thinks it unusual? (Maybe so, I really have no idea.)

[#11 posted by Cheqyr , January 25, 2008 5:02 PM]

I don't know what's funnier: that the "savvy" criminals are borrowing from 20-year-old episodes of "The A Team", or that no one on the Border Patrol ever thought of this dodge before.

I love it when a plan comes together...

[#12 posted by Stefan Jones , January 25, 2008 5:06 PM]

#10: In addition to getting guys over the border, there's the business of delivering them to various destinations once they're in country.

I just read a newspaper story about this side of the smuggling business. A broken license plate lamp led to a traffic stop, and the arrest of a bunch of illegal immigrants and a couple of "coyotes." The van had a delivery list . . . where each guy was heading.

[#13 posted by eclectro , January 26, 2008 2:15 AM]

Ahhhh. Now we see the real benefits of NAFTA.