Overview
- Anti‑narcotics agents stopped a suspicious truck on the Pan‑American Highway, which led to the discovery Wednesday of 370 green‑wrapped packages hidden in a false bottom that tested positive for cocaine and weighed about 469 kilograms.
- Police released video showing the packages spilling from the truck with stickers bearing Erling Haaland’s face and name while investigators detained the driver and a woman identified only as María R., who carried Colombian identity documents.
- Officials estimated the shipment’s value at roughly $842,000 on Ecuador’s domestic market, more than $11 million in the United States, and around €17–19.6 million in Europe, illustrating the large price gap that drives long‑distance smuggling.
- Authorities and reporting note traffickers often stamp images, names or logos on loads as a form of illicit branding to mark which criminal group produced the drugs or which buyer the consignment is meant for, with past seizures also using faces such as Lionel Messi.
- Ecuadorian police say the case fits a pattern of the country serving as a staging and transit hub for cocaine moved northward by local gangs in partnership with Colombian and Mexican cartels and that prosecutions and forensic work on the seizure are ongoing.