If you’re a drug smuggler you’re in a big money business. Checked bag fees shouldn’t be a binding constraint. And buying business class, which comes with more checked bags, is almost always more expensive than paying checked bag fees.

So when drug smugglers and their money launderers are said to be buying business class tickets for the greater checked bag allowance it sounds like the travel management challenges at any big company, where employees are looking for greater comfort and justifying it based on the needs of the business. Drug lords have travel policies, too, and their mules have to try to stay in scope!

A network of smugglers flew business class to gain extra luggage allowances, moving more than $1 million at a time from London to Dubai…Then the couriers would check into five-star hotels for a few days, the NCA investigators said.

They caught the ringleader because he “racked up loyalty points on his Emirates airline card for all the business flights he booked for couriers, earning first-class flights for himself.” All of the ticket purchase data was in one place, with a common rewards number!

Emirates A380 First Class Suite

Emirates A380 First Class Shower

When you’re doing crimes,

• Cell phone location data helps to track you
  
• Your google searches help to catch you
  
• Your credit card payments wrap your activities up nicely in a bow
  
• And crediting everything to the same frequent flyer account? Madness.

My former award booking partner Steve Belkin famously hired disabled Thai rice farmers to take 10 flights a day out of the Golden Triangle area of Thailand and back just for the elite qualifying miles.

• This was called the “Baht Run” since you could buy flights one-way for less than $8
  
• And you could have your employee assign the benefits of their account to their employer
  
• So Steve was a ‘labor broker’ connecting people with ’employees’ who earned top tier elite status on Air Canada and United Airlines, assigning the benefits of that status to the person hiring them (think: business class awards without capacity controls, confirmed upgrades).

Since these rice farmers were just traveling out and back from the opium capital of the world without checked bags, every DEA alarm bell went off and Steve got a visit. He showed his spreadsheets and explained the scheme, and at first event got agents as clients. Eventually the agency told him they understood he wasn’t breaking any laws, wasn’t smuggling drugs, but that the had to stop.

That was sad because he could sell you a business class ticket between the U.S. and Australia via Vancouver for about $2,100 even with his profit margin with these newly-minted Aeroplan Super Elites booking any available seat with miles. Drug dealers, and those who look like kingpins but are really just after rewards, often look alike!