Argentina busts beauty queen drug smuggling ring

This, apparently, actually exists:  Colombian model accused of leading a drug-trafficking gang that persuaded pretty young women to smuggle cocaine to Mexico was arrested Wednesday after evading Argentine police for five months. Angie Sanclemente Valencia had been hiding out in Buenos Aires since December, when airport police caught a 21-year-old Argentine woman with 55 kilograms ...

By , a former associate editor at Foreign Policy.

This, apparently, actually exists: 

This, apparently, actually exists: 

Colombian model accused of leading a drug-trafficking gang that persuaded pretty young women to smuggle cocaine to Mexico was arrested Wednesday after evading Argentine police for five months.

Angie Sanclemente Valencia had been hiding out in Buenos Aires since December, when airport police caught a 21-year-old Argentine woman with 55 kilograms (121 pounds) of cocaine in her baggage boarding a flight to Cancun. That led to arrests of six other alleged gang members who allegedly fingered Colombia’s former "coffee queen" as a ringleader.[…]

The 30-year-old model was captured Wednesday in a hostel for foreigners in the fashionable Palermo neighborhood, airport police spokesman Maximiliano Lencina said.

Lencina declined to discuss the evidence, but said Sanclemente "was an important figure in the organization" that allegedly recruited pretty young Argentine women to smuggle cocaine on flights to Cancun.

Not quite sure I get the premise here. Do attractive women get searched less frequently that unattractive ones? (There is some research suggesting they get convicted less often.) Anyway, I’m sure all will be explained once Valencia gets her movie deal.

Joshua Keating was an associate editor at Foreign Policy. Twitter: @joshuakeating

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