Works of art, gas tanks, statues, carvings and false suitcase bottoms are such common hiding places that they’ve become cliché. Lately, smugglers apparently have discovered a new hiding place: food products.

In May, U.S. Customs and Border Protection officers at Miami Seaport’s Anti-Terrorism Contraband Enforcement Team were inspecting a container that had been manifested as plantains. Plantains look like large, green, unripe bananas and when cooked, are a popular side dish or dessert in Caribbean, Central, South and increasingly, in North American countries.

As officers opened some of the boxes of plantains inside the container, they noticed that some of them seemed awfully firm, even for unripened fruit. It took no time at all for the officers to realize that these plantains were made from fiberglass, crafted and painted to resemble the real thing, and then mixed throughout the shipment.

Officers cut one of the plastic fruits open and out poured white powder, quickly determined to be cocaine—750 pounds of it. CBP spokesman Zach Mann said the drugs, with a wholesale value of $6.1 million, would have been worth several times that in street sales.

Hiding drugs in food can be dangerous for unsuspecting consumers. In 1990, said Mann, a Miami man died after drinking liquid cocaine disguised as a Latin American soft drink. The drink had been smuggled from Colombia and inadvertently wound up in the retail market.

In October 2003, CBP officers in Miami boarded a flight from Colombia to conduct a routine inspection. Their canine alerted to drugs in the kitchen area. Searching the food-storage drawer, the officers found several packs of peanuts in the bottom of the drawer that had obviously been set aside from the other packages. In addition, the officers thought the packages just didn’t “feel right.” They opened a pack and found cocaine—2.6 pounds of it, worth $20,000—hidden inside 51 bags of peanuts. Another time, CBP officers found 300 pounds of cocaine in a Miami warehouse, this time concealed inside sweet potatoes made of plaster of Paris.

CBP officers constantly rise to the challenge of protecting America by keeping terrorists and their weapons out of the country. But they are committed to keeping illegal drugs out as well. “These hardworking CBP officers are out there every day, protecting the American public from all threats, including dangerous drugs,” stated Thomas S. Winkowski, Director of Field Operations.

The plantain case has been turned over to U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in Miami for investigation.