Malaysia arrests Singaporean with $375,000 of cannabis bound for London

Malaysian police arrested a 29-year-old Singaporean man at Ipoh's airport with suspected cannabis worth RM1.52 million (US$375,000), after he accepted an online job offering S$4,000 to deliver luggage to London.

Auxiliary police found 36 plastic packets of dried buds weighing 19.04 kg when they searched his check-in baggage at Sultan Azlan Shah Airport at 6:20 a.m. on Sunday, The Star reported.

The unemployed man had been due to fly from Ipoh to Singapore and continue to London, Perak police chief Mohd Alwi Zainal Abidin told a press conference on Tuesday, the New Straits Times reported. He said the haul was enough to supply 47,900 drug users.

Alwi said the man had answered a job offer on a website and was told the luggage held high-quality counterfeit luxury goods. The man claimed he had not opened it.

"We believe the syndicate's modus operandi was to lure people with lucrative job offers before exploiting them as drug mules to transport drugs overseas on commercial flights," Alwi said.

He said the man had flown from Singapore to Kuala Lumpur and traveled to Kajang in Selangor, where police believe he collected the drugs from a supplier. He reached Ipoh by e-hailing car on Saturday and was arrested the next morning.

Dried cannabis buds in a plastic bag. Photo by Unsplash/Crystalweed cannabis

The syndicate appeared to be targeting less busy airports such as Ipoh's, which has only one daily flight to Singapore, Alwi said. He added that it was the second drug-smuggling incident involving the airport recorded this year.

A preliminary urine test found no traces of drugs in the man's system, and he has no previous criminal record, Alwi said.

The man has been remanded for seven days while police investigate the case under Section 39B of the Dangerous Drugs Act 1952, which carries the death penalty, or life imprisonment and at least 12 strokes of the cane, upon conviction.

Hussein Omar Khan, director of the federal police's Narcotics Criminal Investigation Department, said on Oct. 9 that drug syndicates had begun using smaller airports as transit points after authorities tightened controls at Kuala Lumpur International Airport, Utusan Malaysia reported.

He said a foreign man had been arrested at the Ipoh airport on Sept. 1 while waiting for a flight to Singapore on his way to London.