Nearly $1M worth of cocaine washes up on Florida beaches amid Dorian waves
Police in Melbourne, Florida reportedly confiscated more than a dozen bricks of cocaine this week that washed up on shore in the waves of Hurricane Dorian.
The first suspicious looking stash of illegal drugs was spotted by a walker who then alerted authorities, reports NBC News.
The officer at the scene took possession of the package which a Melbourne police spokesperson described as "wrapped in a way that was consistent with narcotics." The item, which weighed in at one kilogram, tested positive for cocaine, according to multiple reports.
The packages of cocaine also reportedly had the letters “DIAMANT” printed on the wrapping.
North of Melbourne, 20 miles away at Cocoa Beach, Florida, another suspicious package was confiscated by authorities. This one was a single duffel bag floating to the beach containing 15 more bricks of the white powdery drug.
"It happened before the storm, it was on Friday, Aug. 30, it was just a beachgoer that saw a red travel duffel bag that looked suspicious," Sergeant Manny Hernandez of Cocoa Beach Police Department told Fox Business. "So they contacted the Cocoa Beach Police Department and when officers responded, they took the bag and brought it back to station. We then contacted the U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP)."
Hernandez said CBP confirmed that the packages were in fact cocaine and that each brick contained one kilo of the drug. The estimated street value of a kilo of cocaine in Florida is between $20,000 and $30,000, he added.
"We don't know if the incident and drug recovery in Melbourne was related to what we found in Cocoa Beach," he said. Between the two seizures, the net haul of the drugs washing onto Florida shores amid Hurricane Dorain is worth at least $810,000.
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Hurricane Dorian began as a Category 5 hurricane, ravaging the Bahamas over the Labor Day weekend before heading towards the eastern coast of the United States. The storm has been downgraded to a Category 2 and is currently edging towards Georgia and the Carolinas' coastlines.
Melbourne Police did not return Fox Business' request for comment by time of publication.