SMUGGLING BY TOURISTS

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXVIII, Issue 5183, 26 September 1927, Page 1

SMUGGLING BY TOURISTS

DIAMONDS HIDDEN IN SOAP. BUSY TIME FOR U.S.A. INSPECTORS Smuggling by returning tourists from Europe this summer will probably bejat all records. Everyone is a smuggler at heart, ip the oopinion of Mr Ernest W. Samp, chief of the United States Division of Customs. It is estimated by the State Department on the strengh <xf the, number of applications already made for passports, that probably 250,000* persons will temporarily forsake the United States, most of them heading for Parin and London. New York Customs inspectoors are anticipating a busy time when the crowd, laden with articles picked up in Bond Street, or tilie Rue de la Paix, starts pouring back into the United States late in August.

It is estimated that these passenwill pay on the piers in duties and fines approximately £300,000', says a writer in the “Public Ledger.”

Mr Camp declares that women are the worst offenders. It would appear that a woman cannot go to Eurape without loading herself up with Paris gowns, hats, and lingerie, amber beads from Berlin, gloves, from Vienna, and sport dresses and stockings from London.

Many women, because they wear these for a short period while abroad, have the mistaken idea that tjhey may be brought into the United States duty free, apd they, fail to declare them because they are “presents” for friends. They become indignant wheji' called on to pay duty.

Film stars and society women have an amazing faith in their ability to outwit the Customs. A Ahn .actress was once discovered with twehty-flv® undeclared dresses worth from £2O to £lOO each.

Diamonds are oft,en found in chamois bags, in fountain pens, in tooth paste, soap, powder boxes, or sewn in the lapels of coats and in the hems of garments. (Opium has been found in tins suspended in casks of olive oil; but this kind of smuggling naturally is not done by passengers. The stuff is foupd in the cargo.

Objects of art 100 years or mor® Old, have been allowed in duty free sincej 1913. Many a returning American, however, has been shocked by being informed that his supposed Tudor or Georgian flndsi are modem counterfeits.

About 80 per c&nt. of the information against smugglers of diamonds comes to the Government from persons not in its employ, and only a negligible fraction of the informants are, actuated by patriotic Almost all thesej-tipsters askfor financial reward with the same breath or the same pen stroke which carries the information.

These semi-amateur or semi-pro-fessional detectives may receive as •much as £lO,OOO for a single “tip.”