Starting Up

Exercise 1. Which of these methods of concealment are the most common?

• double bottom;

• double cover;

• hollowed book;

• inside pocket;

• sole.

Word Study

Exercise 2. Give the Russian equivalents for the following words paying attention to their suffixes and endings:

conceal – concealment – concealed

construct – construction – constructor

attach – attachment – attachable

imagine – imagination – imaginable

access – access – accessible

involve – involvement – involving

value – value – valuable

cover – cover – covering

Exercise 3. Form the nouns from the following verbs:

to adapt, to traffic, to involve, to discover, to find, to pack, to locate, to replace, to test, to use, to direct, to fill, to load, to swallow, to divide, to design, to sail, to built, to end, to stop, to contain, to facilitate.

Exercise 4. Arrange the following in pairs of antonyms.

normal false inner inside clever hide limited artificial find give consignee

take lose unlimited consignor silly natural abnormal find outside outer true

Exercise 5. Study the following words.

to facilitate – облегчать, содействовать, упрощать

fraud – мошенничество, обман

framework – корпус, каркас

seal – печать

hash – гашиш

a chef – шеф-повар

a courier – (нарко)курьер

a drug dealer – наркодилер

a consignee – грузополучатель

modus operandi – образ действия

artificial limb – искусственная конечность (тела человека)

prune – слива, чернослив (плод)

Reading and Speaking

Exercise 6. Choose the facts in the text to prove that:

- types of concealment are varied;

- the methods of concealment are sophisticated;

- trafficker’s imagination is very rich;

- couriers often stop at big airports;

- swallowers’ journeys often end in death.

Text 1 Types of Concealment

Types of concealment are as varied as the goods or the containers used to transport them. Any kind of space can be used to include concealment: containers, trailers, hollow box sections of a container/trailer wall, the floor, the roof, etc.

There are, however, basically four types of concealment in containers/trailers:

• concealments between the outer and inner walls, between and in the framework etc.;

• concealments using false roofs and floors;

• concealments within the cargo inside the container.

The place to conceal the cocaine or other goods can be:

• on the terminal;

• during transport from terminal to consignee;

• on the ship (involvement of crew).

Crabs, prunes, and wigs are used to hide smuggled drugs.

Some of the methods of concealment are very clever: car brakes, fake bananas, hollowed-out walking sticks and drugs carried internally by couriers. Every conceivable method imaginable is tried and tested by the traffickers.

One of the most imaginative smuggling efforts involved a specially routed coffee table with packs of hash inside the wooden top. A drug dealer who ran a mobile phone business used this modus operandi to ship in cannabis.

Smuggling methods are seemingly limited only by a trafficker’s imagination. A man with one leg was caught with cannabis stashed inside his artificial limb.

Cocaine worth a large amount of money was found stuffed inside frozen crabs brought in by a qualified chéf; cannabis was discovered inside tubs of dried prunes; hash was found inside elaborately designed hollow doorframes – these are more commonly used methods of smuggling.

Smugglers use wigs, sausage spice, footballs, false-bottomed luggage, food, hollow timber, clothes, electronic goods, bamboo furniture, book covers and hollowed-out shoes.

Couriers are directed to take special routes via several international locations, sometimes stopping at big airports.

There is an endless queue of these couriers, known as swallowers, who are willing to risk the hazardous journeys through international airports that can take up to a week – journeys that occasionally end in death when packages burst internally.

Drug concealment tricks:

1. Asphalt tanker trucks: hot liquid asphalt tankers are loaded with marijuana in front and rear compartments.

2. Baskets: commercially available baskets filled with marijuana are reportedly available to buy in Jamaica.

3. Batteries: twelve-volt car battery cases concealing drugs within empty cells.

4. Boats: sailing boats filled with marijuana and the original fiberglass covering replaced professionally.

5. Body carry/clothing/shoes: tailored to fit waistcoat, underwear and leg bandages with custom-shaped drug packs inside the devices.

6. Fish: live tropical fish in plastic aquatic environments used to mask the presence of submerged packages of liquid cocaine.

7. Bottles: heroin concealed within professionally-sealed alcohol bottles in cardboard cartons.

8. Cans: beer and soft drink cans professionally sealed with a commercially-available canning machine.

9. Containers: containers with factory-built double floors primarily used to ship air cargo.

10. Film: highly sophisticated concealment of cocaine within Polaroid film cartridges.

Exercise 7. Read the text below to find some other methods of concealment.