Dutch man caught in Germany with 50,000 ecstasy pills

Authorities near Frankfurt, Germany arrested a Dutch driver after finding 50 thousand ecstasy tablets in his car worth over 350 thousand euros. He was remanded into custody by a magistrate, German police said in a statement issued on Friday.

The arrest happened during a routine patrol of the traffic routes into the Frankfurt area on February 12. Customs inspectors monitoring the area ordered the driver of a Volkswagen Up with Dutch license plates to pull over near a petrol station on Autobahn 3 in Medenbach.

Officers searched the vehicle after the 23-year-old said he was not carrying any prohibited items like weapons or narcotics, police said. When inspecting the vehicle, officers noticed an upholstered false bottom in the trunk.

An endoscopic camera used to search the hidden space revealed what appeared to be a large quantity of pills. “Once the MDF board was removed by force, the customs officers found inside ten bags full of red ecstasy tablets, with a total weight of 24 kilograms, and seized them,” police said.

The 50 thousand pills could be sold on the street for roughly 355 thousand euros, police said, even though their material value was about 60 cents per pill. A search of the Dutch man also turned up 2.5 grams of hash in his underpants.

He was still in jail nine days after the arrest. A trial date was not yet revealed.