Traffickers use commercial couriers to move drugs to Mindanao

CAGAYAN DE ORO CITY, Philippines—Drug traffickers are now using some commercial courier companies to transport their merchandise from Manila to Mindanao.

This is what the Philippine Drug Enforcement Agency found out in the wake of the seizure of  1.5 kilograms of shabu or methamphetamine hydrochloride—the largest haul in the region so far—and the arrest of a suspected drug pusher here on Monday evening.

Robert Opena, PDEA director for Northern Mindanao, said the agency had received a few days earlier an intelligence report about an incoming package of shabu from Manila, which was being sent through a courier company.

Opena said that immediately, PDEA coordinated with the courier company, whose name he declined to reveal, and posted agents disguised as employees at the pickup branch inside a popular mall here.

On Monday evening, Sammy Yusop, the suspected pusher, came in and claimed the package that contained a TV picture tube.

“The two packets of the drugs were placed inside the picture tube of a 20-inch TV, weighing 750 grams each,” Opena said.

He said Yusop waited until just a few minutes before the mall’s closing time to claim the package.

Opena said after signing for the package, Yusop left the courier company’s branch and proceeded to the parking lot of the mall.

As the suspect was about to open the door of his brand new Toyota HI-Ace Grandia with plate number KEE-331, PDEA agents who trailed him from inside the mall announced the arrest. Yusop did not resist.

Opena estimated the street value of the seized narcotics at P15 million.

During investigation, Opena said, Yusop said that the drugs were to be taken to Pagadian City. But Opena said he doubted this claim because Pagadian City was quite a distance from here and it would be too cumbersome for any drug pusher to travel such a distance with illegal merchandise.

“We believe it was either for Bukidnon or Central Mindanao,” Opena said.

He said PDEA came up with the theory because a man arrested during a raid in September in Bukidnon had the same surname as the suspect.

Opena said the seizure also led to a theory that Yusop could be a member of a big syndicate dealing in illegal drugs.

“We disrupted their operation and business,” he said.

Opena said PDEA would be requesting forensic examination of the cellphone seized from Yusop as this could contain “a mine of data.”

He said initially, PDEA saw on the cellphone’s phonebook “familiar names of politicians and police officers.”

Opena said they wanted to determine how extensive Yusop’s operation was and if he had used the same courier company to receive drugs in the past.

PDEA, he said, has already asked the courier company for a list of possible transactions Yusop might have had with them.

As charges against Yusop were being finalized, Opena said they were also trying to secure footage of the CCTV in the courier company’s Manila branch where the package was sent because it turned out the sender’s name on the label was fictitious.