X-Ray Reveals Shocking Heroin Find in 83-Year-Old's Luggage

An 83-year-old man from the United Kingdom has been apprehended at an Australian airport with nearly 4,5 lbs of heroin in his carry-on luggage.

Knewz.com has learned that the drug was detected as the man’s bag passed through an X-ray machine at Melbourne International Airport after he stepped off a jet from Doha in Qatar.

Local officials first noted a white powder. Upon testing it they confirmed that the man had in fact managed to smuggle contraband into the aircraft and onto Australian soil.

The man (who was arrested) and the bag were then referred to the country’s Federal Police .

Reports indicate the unnamed trafficker has since been charged with a single count of possessing a “commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug and importing a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug.”

He has since appeared in the Melbourne Magistrate’s court with another hearing set for October 3.

The Australian Border Force's Superintendent Kelly-Anne Parish weighed in on the arrest claiming it as part of her agency’s commitment to stopping drugs from entering the country.

“ABF officers at Melbourne International Airport are highly skilled to observe passenger behaviors, relying not purely on intelligence, but intuition and instinct to identify potential threats.”

“Criminals will try to hide illicit substances in a variety of ways, and our officers have many sophisticated detection methods at their disposal,” she said.

“This detection of illicit drugs should serve as a warning to all travelers, regardless of age, who wish to run the gauntlet and attempt to bypass our border controls—we will stop you in your tracks and you will be placed before the courts.”

Australia’s drug problem is not a new thing.

Knewz.com reported on July 30, that a 77-year-old New Zealand native, Eric Chang, was caught trying to smuggle the same quantity (4,4 lbs) of the same substance (heroin) from Thailand .

Like the recent 88-year-old smuggler, Chang’s load of contraband was found stashed in his luggage.

A month later, four men were apprehended for trying to ship 530 lbs of crystal meth from Hong Kong into the island territory.

Chinese officials discovered the loot stashed in 40 large bolts of leather headed for Sydney (one of Australia’s largest cities).

“We unrolled the 40 rolls for further inspection and discovered the illegal drug,” Henry Fong Heung-wing, in charge of the local drug enforcement agency, told the South China Morning Post .

Around the same time, another sophisticated scheme to move drugs from the United Kingdom was uncovered . The culprit, an Australian man, operated on the dark web and dispatched his consignments in shipments of “cookware, toy cars, and a blackjack set.”

The Australian federal police who worked on the case for months were tipped off to the operation when they intercepted three separate hauls entering the country by air cargo.

It was noted that one of the packages comprised more than “300 tablets of MDMA, oxycodone, and a synthetic opioid, while the second and third packages had a total of 60g of MDMA, 25g of ketamine, 15g of meth, and 14g of heroin.”

Australian Federal Police Detective Superintendent, Craig Bellis, noted that these amounts – while relatively small – added up and posed a significant threat to the country.