A 40-year-old woman was arrested in the Dominican Republic after she was caught carrying $70,000 inside her stomach and $69,000 inside her suitcase, The Associated Press reported on Friday.
The money was divided up into 16 capsules inside her gut, likely tied to drug trafficking, according to a spokesman for the National Drug Control Agency.
The woman, who has not been identified, was arrested at a Punta Cana airport after coming in on a flight from Brussels. This is the first time Dominican police said they have apprehended someone who was carrying money in their stomach, according to the New York Post.
Smuggling money inside or very close to the body isn't a new technique that is particular to the Dominican Republic. In July, a woman named Nawal Msaad was caught with 20,000 euros inside her underwear before getting on a flight bound for Istanbul from Heathrow, the Belfast Telegraph reported. She is accused of trying to fund jihadists in Syria with smuggled money.
In August, a woman was caught trying to smuggle roughly $41,000 in cash onto an international flight bound for the Philippines from Detroit, with half of it stuffed inside her girdle. She said the money came from selling her home for $120,000 and told officials she thought it would be safer to carry the money herself than wire it.
