Drug smugglers are a creative bunch. They've used anything from carving Jesus statues out of cocaine to using puppies as drug mules and building their own submarines. Now, French and Dutch police have caught a smuggling ring that used a technique "worthy of James Bond":
Three French divers were arrested earlier this month as they prepared to dive under a cargo boat in Rotterdam which had 101kg of pure cocaine stuffed into a missile-shaped container attached to its hull. [...]
Narcotics agents first got wind of the scheme last June when bemused port police fished four divers — complete with underwater propulsion vehicle - out of inky-black waters near Fos-sur-Mer, a major oil port on France’s Mediterranean coast, in the middle of the night.
“Our initial reaction was: are they shooting a scene from an action movie?,” said Philippe Frizon, head of Nice judicial police. The divers were released, but police soon realised these were no ordinary frogmen.
Henry Samuel of The Telegraph has the story: Link
Pay someone that works for a shipping company to inform you what ships are going where. When a ship is heading to the destination you want... you sneak in at night and attach your cargo to the hull. Then you fly to the destination with your equipment and wait for your inside guy to let you know when your ship arrives at the port and go collect your cargo. This way if the cargo is found prior to arrival the inside guy will know the cops are on to you and tip you off and at the same time he has plausible deniability.
Probably has been going on like clockwork for sometime.