Customs

I'm in the UK. Last week a friend of mine, an IT specialist who regularly travels the world setting up systems, had to go to Aus for such business. Money is tight in IT so his tight boss sent him on a tourist visa, for 6 days, as its free apparently.
Arrives Sydney Airport. Customs pull him over and start to question his '6 day tourist' visa. Why so short etc. He is taken away, questioned some more, his luggage checked over and his wallet taken from him briefly, ostensibly for further verification on ID. Then comes this.

"Do you take drugs sir?"
"No of course not"
"Then can you explain why your suitcase and wallet contain traces of drugs?"

Ah. At which point he comes clean and is totally honest with them.

"I take cocaine"
"How often"
"Birthdays and parties"

This apparently saved him from a strip search, or so they said. He has no idea where the traces on the suitcase came from, but assumes he spilled some once. His wallet is easy to explain. He has had the same credit card for nearly 3 years. He's not a heavy user, birthdays and parties is all it really is, but he does like chopping.
Beware your credit cards.

Finally, after about 4 hours of further serious questioning, he was allowed to go free, but with an 'L' stamped in his passport. Wouldn't it be useful if an Aussie BL'er worked for customs? In the meantime, anyone have any idea what the L stands for?

Damn... thats full on!! - thanks for the story, and I hope someone can answer your question soon.

BigTrancer

yer that def is a good story...

One of my ex work supervisors went to London for a short business trip. On the way back he gets stopped by customs because they found traces of cocaine in a leather jacket's pocket. He had purchased this really nice thick jacket second hand. Here he was trying to explain that it was a second hand jacket that he just bought :D sheeeh!!

Nevertheless it made him sweat for no reason

While that is a good story it is extremely fucked up to do that to a person i understand the legal point of it but its still messed up

Well, a few quick searches have failed to discover what the L stands for but I'll keep looking. It possibly stands for low level interrogation or something, but it's just a guess. Either way it will be a pain until he at least replaces his passport, but it will probably arise on every customs computer whenever his name/number is entered

Travelling through Singapore in the seventies, such an admission or simple suspicion on behalf of authorities would have seen his passport stamped SHIT for suspected hippy in transit.

Just thought I'd share a customs story

I know someone that got caught by a sniffer dog (I was there) while we were in a queue to get through customs in New Zealand. The dog and its handler approached the bag, and the dog sat down (the signal that it has found something..).

The handler walks the dog away and brings it back and it does the same thing. I noticed that in a few mins the dog handler approached a customs officer standing at the end of the rows of customs officers checking peoples passports.

When we reached the customs officer, the man who was spoken to by the dog handler came and stood behind the customs officer who was serving us. We were then advised that there was a problem with one of the passports, and to go with the officer standing behind him to discuss it.

In the other room, there were more officers, and they asked us whose bag this particular one belonged to; once established the rest of us were able to leave and wait in another area.

Sometime later, the person being questioned/stripped to underpants was released.

The only thing that got him in that room was the smell of Marijuana on a jacket (he was a regular smoker )

For his trouble, the New Zealand Customs gave him a souvenir pen and told him to get out ! hehe.


I might add, on the way back from a holiday in Europe (specifically Holland), coming back via Malaysia on Malaysian Airlines, while waiting for my flight to Melbourne I noticed a massive increase in security (as well as sniffer dogs) around my gate (which must be a regular occurance in such a strict country especially relating to drugs). They were scanning bags sometimes twice, they also had a passport checker at the gate, to check for fakes etc.

Having witnessed a certain incident in New Zealand in regards to sniffer dogs , I was quite worried about a certain jacket of mine after smoking pot everyday in Holland for the last month! HA!

I buried it in my carryon bag, and when lining up to be 'inspected' by multiple gun totin' Malaysian officers, i queued up on the right hand side away from that damn dog

Anyway, all was good (for me).

Lets just say one poor guy from Africa didn't make it on the flight to Melbourne.

An old friend of mine was travelling back to visit some relatives in New Zealand and was nabbed by the drug dogs. He fully freaked out as he he had made made a mental note not to take anything that may indicate that he was a user on his holiday.

Anywho he was taken away by customs and they went through all of his stuff, took most of his clothes off until they came across his hat.

Unfortunately several weeks before he had gone to a rave with his baseball cap on and he had stashed a 1/4 gram of speed in it!

He had fully forgotten about it was quite suprised as well as he thought he had taken it.

He explained what had happened to the customs officials and they pretty much well laughed but they took the goey and advised him to be more careful in the future! LOL

Yeah, interesting story. I often find old satty's in the nether regions of my wallet - weeks later - so i'll definitely be going through and cleaning out anything incriminating out of my wallet before my next flight!

I know someone who found a bag of DMT hidden in his jacket pocket months after he got back from a trip to NZ, pretty lucky really...

who said drug users aren't forgetful...

I think you will find that when they say "we found minute traces of drug on your clothes/wallet" all that has really happened is the dog has alerted the handler when the luggage was inspected. Unless they actually find drugs there is nothing they can do (besides search/question you etc- they can't arrest you for having traces of drugs on your clothing). You can either deny everything or simply tell them you might have had something in your pocket etc. The latter will get you out of customs sooner, but may lead to something going against your record (such as an L marked on your passport..?). However, that won't really matter, so long as you never intend to smuggle anything in the future. If you deny, deny, deny, they will eventually release you and right it off as a false alarm on the dogs part. They won't refuse you entry to a country because a dog has alerted to something they can't find.

^ Yeah, I was gonna mention something along that line - I don't think you can be charged with possession of traces of cocaine... but if they can't find anything in your luggage and they're sure you have something to hide, where are they gonna look next?

BigTrancer

'You there! Step forward.
Move your tongue around, up and down.
Show the palms of your hands, turn them the other way.
Lift up your nutsack
Bend over, cough twice
Whose your fucking daddy?'

My friend works in customs. Interestingly he was the one who found the 6kg of coke at brisbane airport yesterday. He is familiar with the process you described, but he said that, not only has he never heard of stamping an L in a passport, to do so would be illegal as it defaces an official document - exactly like defacing a bank note. The reason they test your clothes and stuff is so they have a reason to hold you and search you thoroughly.

^^^
Well all I can say to that is that I've seen the 'L' for myself.
And what you say doesn't ring true because passports certainly used to get all sorts stamped in them (and I don't just mean visas etc).
But thanks for asking your mate...now tell him to stop finding cocaine. What sort of job is that?

BT: A friend of mine's father used to work for customs. My understanding of the strip searching laws etc is that if u are picked up by a sniffer dog - unless they find drugs in ur bags they are not allowed to strip search you.

I know it sounds crazy - but if u are in posession of drugs "where the sun don't shine" and have nothing in ur bag u will get away with it as long as u deny deny deny.

^ I donno, i think that sounds a tad dicey. Is giving you a laxative and watching what you shit considered a strip search?

StoneHappyMonday said:

^^^
Well all I can say to that is that I've seen the 'L' for myself.
And what you say doesn't ring true because passports certainly used to get all sorts stamped in them (and I don't just mean visas etc).
But thanks for asking your mate...now tell him to stop finding cocaine. What sort of job is that?

Click to expand...

A good one because there was really 8kg's of coke found.

thats the other thing - i read 8 but he still swears it was 6. The only thing i can think of is the packaging is also included in the weight when you go to court. He said it was the dodgiest false bottom in a case he'd ever seen, they just emptied out the case and it still weighed 13kg - and the guy had been on a 6 day visa to venezuela as a one man caberet band. His only story was that it was put in there when he left his bag unatended for a minute LOL.