Cocaine was on his mind, under his toupee

Drug traffickers have resorted to many crafty, hard-to-detect methods of disguising what they are up to.

This is not one of those stories.

Spanish police Tuesday announced the arrest of a Colombian man whose idea of hiding half a kilogram of cocaine — more than 1 pound — was to put the package, a few inches thick, on top of his head and cover it with an oversized toupee.

The man, whose identity was not revealed, was detained last month at Barcelona’s airport after he landed on a flight from Bogota. He attracted the attention of airport police officers both because he appeared nervous and because of the size of the bulging hairpiece that he wore under a hat, according to the newspaper La Vanguardia.

The national police tweeted photos of the suspect, a 65-year-old man, on Tuesday. A large gray lump, apparently wrapped in cellophane, was perched atop his mostly bald head — one image showed him with the toupee balanced precariously over his dome.

Police said his cargo had a street value that could exceed 30,000 euros ($34,000).

Authorities did not say why the arrest had not been announced earlier.

The Spanish police have long been on the lookout for so-called mules, who are often ordinary people selected by criminal networks to transport cocaine and other illegal products on their behalf.

The most embarrassing recent airport cocaine seizure in Spain involved a member of the security staff of President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil. Sgt. Manoel Silva Rodrigues was arrested at Seville’s airport during a stopover after 39 kilograms of cocaine were found in his suitcase. Rodrigues was part of an advance team supporting Bolsonaro’s trip to Japan for a Group of 20 meeting.