CINCINNATI (AP) - Federal customs officials say over $600,000 in U.S. money was hidden in tortilla press machines being shipped from someone in Mexico to Bogota, Colombia, through a freight hub at the Cincinnati/Northern Kentucky International Airport.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection says its Cincinnati agents working with the DHL hub at the airport in nearby Hebron, Ky., found the currency Saturday at the shipping facility.
The agency says a Cincinnati customs officer found the $639,700 in a routine inspection of two separate shipments of tortilla presses. Officials say the currency was found wrapped in plastic inside the presses' rollers.
Spokesman Brian Bell with the agency's field operations office in Chicago says it was the largest single seizure of smuggled bulk currency in the history of the agency's Cincinnati office.