Mexican woman nabbed at NYC airport hiding $58K worth of cocaine in sauce containers

(U.S. Customs and Border Protection)

What does it take to make a good mole sauce? Some chipotle chiles, a little chicken broth, a handful of quartered tomatoes … and a dash cocaine.

That was the secret ingredient for the sauce of one Mexican woman who was caught at New York City’s John F. Kennedy airport trying to smuggle more than 3 pounds of cocaine into the U.S. in food containers.

Reynalda Leal Ricando, a drug mule who flew in the U.S. from Mexico City, was flagged by security after she declared that she had brought some home-cooked food with her to New York. When U.S. Customs agents put her sauce through an X-ray machine, they noticed “suspicious shapes” in two of her plastic containers.

Upon further inspection, her secret sauce turned out to be more of a “tar-like mass” that a U.S. Customs spokesperson said was seasoned with plastic baggies containing “a white powdery substance that tested positive for cocaine,” the New York Daily News reported.

Talk about food addiction!

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The seized blow weighed around 3.3 pounds and has the approximate street value of $58,000, according to the CBP.

Ricando, who is a citizen of Mexico, was arrested for the importation of a controlled substance and was turned over to Homeland Security Investigations. She was arrested on narcotics smuggling charges and will appear in court in the New York City borough of Queens.