December 29, 2001

SFGate.com

Apparently ready to launder drugs, not money, Mexican traffickers packed a 6-ton shipment of marijuana into washing machines aboard a truck and sent it to the U.S. border.

The Mexican Justice Department announced Saturday that the truck's driver was arrested earlier this week near San Luis Rio Colorado, across the border from Arizona, and was detained on suspicion of drug trafficking.

The marijuana was packed in amid the appliances aboard the moving van. Some of the appliances were mere simulated sheet-metal shells packed in cardboard boxes.