TIGRE — Is there a place they haven't thought of yet to hide drugs? How about a meat pie?
Argentine police have uncovered a so-called "narcopizzeria" in the district of Tigre in the northern outskirts of Buenos Aires, which supplied customers with cocaine hidden in "pizzas, pies and chicken."
A report in Clarín showed pictures of cocaine bags hidden in the innocent, uncooked, pies or empanadas.
"They had a phone service and home delivery," Clarín reported of the pizzeria, which could sell up to 50-100 doses a day in Tigre and Los Troncos del Talar, an adjacent district.
The operation was run by two brothers "and their accomplices," and was by no means exceptional; Clarín observed "drug pizzerias" were becoming a trend. Police found a similar restaurant in recent weeks in the district of Lanús, whose menu included the Dolores Fonzi pizza — named after an Argentine actress reputedly not indifferent to smoking the occasional joint.
Using a pizzeria as a cover recalls a legendary case in New York in the 1980s, dubbed the Pizza Connection, that found links between the New York and Sicilian Mafias, where pizza parlors served as fronts and money laundering outlets for the sale of heroin and cocaine.
