Two truckers were nabbed hauling $36 million worth of pot and magic mushrooms in a tractor-trailer along I-78 in New Jersey, state police announced Wednesday.
What started as a routine traffic stop for a commercial vehicle inspection in Greenwich Township on Feb. 18 turned into a drug bust on a 10-ton load. According to a probable-cause affidavit obtained by NJ.com, troopers performing a load securement check asked to examine how the tractor-trailer’s doors were sealed. Upon opening the doors they were hit with the smell of marijuana, which led them to search the entire vehicle.
Truckers Fnu Attiq Ur-Rahman, 22, and Haffez Rehman Ur, 35, both from Stockton, Calif., were taken into custody after law enforcement seized the trailer packed with over 20,000 pounds of “marijuana, cannabis/THC products and psilocybin products,” authorities said in a statement.
Both men were charged with possession and possession with intent to distribute marijuana and psilocybin mushrooms. They were being held at the Warren County Correctional Center pending a detention hearing.
The weigh station where the men were busted, about nine miles from the Pennsylvania border, is the same place where police had found a tractor-trailer last March packed with $28.4 million in marijuana and cannabis-related products, The Morning Call reported at the time.
The shipping manifest stated the truck was carrying oranges, but troopers became suspicious of unlabeled cardboard boxes amid the orange pallets. That discovery also involved the arrest of two men.
