Philadelphia customs officials seize over 10,000 Xanax pills found inside yarn shipment

Philadelphia Customs and Border Protection officers intercepted over 10,000 Xanax pills concealed inside spools of yarn in a shipment headed to New York, U.S. Customs and Border Protection announced.

Officials said Customs and Border Protection officers were alerted on April 26 by trade enforcement experts at the Baltimore Field Office, who reviewed incoming cargo manifests and suspected that something may be amiss with this shipment.

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Philadelphia Customs and Border Protection officers found that shipment on the same day while inspecting express consignment parcels that arrived from overseas, according to officials.

Officials said officers then x-rayed the shipment - that was originally coming from the Netherlands - and detected something abnormal. When opening up the shipment officers found a dozen spools of yarn that were unusually heavy.

Once officers unraveled the yarn revealing stacks of 10-pill blister packs taped to the inner spool, according to officials.

In total, officers seized 1,006 blister packs of 1 mg dose of Alprazolam - in total 10,060 pills - worth a street value of about $30,000, officials said.

"The threads of this seizure were knitted together by people in different locations, but it was the Customs and Border Protection officers in Philadelphia who had a skein-dalous ball unspooling and counting out a huge Xanax load they seized on Friday," U.S. Customs and Border Protection said in a news release.

Alprazolam, known by the popular brand name Xanax, is a scheduled IV controlled substance. The drug officials said is misused as a recreational drug, and when combined with other substances, such as alcohol, can slow breathing and possibly lead to death.

Officials said no arrests have been made in this case and an investigation continues.