Police in Italy find shipment of cocaine-filled coffee beans

Investigators found 130 grams of cocaine in a two-kilo shipment of coffee beans that arrived at Milan Malpensa airport from Colombia, according to a statement by the Guardia di Finanza financial police.

Customs officials decided to review the package after noting that its shared recipient shared the name of a fictional character: Santino D’Antonio, a mob boss in the movie John Wick: Chapter 2, Italian police told CNN.

Once they opened the package, they found more than 500 coffee beans that had been emptied, filled with cocaine and sealed with dark brown tape, according to the statement.

Police tracked the package down to Florence and arrested a 50-year-old Italian man when he came to try to pick it up from a tobacco shop in the city.

The man was registered as a resident in the Colombian city of Medellín, according to the statement. The police already knew him and had previously been arrested on drug charges.

Earlier this month, the Italian Guardia di Finanza confiscated a huge shipment of 14 metric tons (15.4 US tons) of amphetamines, which they said were produced by ISIS in Syria.

Agents tracked three suspicious containers to the port of Salerno in southwestern Italy and found 84 million pills with a market value of € 1 billion ($ 1.12 billion) inside paper cylinders for industrial use, he said. the police in a statement.

Investigators said the raid was the largest drug seizure in the world, both in terms of value and quantity.