The Hall brothers from Corozal had an ingenious idea - they would use a garbage truck to smuggle a load of contraband out of the Corozal Free Zone. The garbage truck did its regular rounds in the zone yesterday morning, and left early. But customs had excellent intelligence and followed the truck to a nearby dump site where they found EZEKIEL, EDWARDO AND CARLOS HALL offloading contraband from the garbage truck.
Their haul included 50 cases of Dos Equis Beer, 24 cases of Dutch Cheese, three cases of assorted liquors like Hypnotic, two cases of wine and three cases of Cigarettes.
All told the contraband items added up to a value of 28,666 dollars. They were arrested and fined three times the value - which is 86 thousand dollars. They were unable to pay, so today they were taken to Corozal Magistrate's Court where they were arraigned on charges of being recklessly in control of un-customed goods which are chargeable by duty which has not been paid, and recklessly carrying un-customed goods.
Due to the steep fine, the bail was set high, at twenty thousand dollars, and reports say they did not meet it because the court closed early today at noon for its Christmas Party. So the brothers have been remanded. We are informed that one of them has a prior conviction for a customs offence.
And while the eighty six thousand dollar fine is rough, it could have been worse. When the alleged contrabandists saw the customs officers, they turned on the trash compactor and started to crush the contraband as they would to garbage. One of the men is believed to work for the contractor who is paid to pick up garbage in the zone.
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