Two people were arrested in Maine on Tuesday with more than four pounds of cocaine, two pounds of which was disguised as a cake, authorities said.
The fake cake's packaging said it weighs one kilogram and said in Spanish it has "Perfect white and ideal flow!" according to an image shared Wednesday by the Maine Department of Public Safety.
"It really is not cocaine that's mixed with cake batter or cocaine inside of a cake, it's actually a one-kilo pressed brick of cocaine," Peter Arno, commander for Division 2 of the Maine Drug Enforcement Agency, said in a Friday interview with NECN and NBC10 Boston.
Arno said drug traffickers often use coffee grounds to throw dogs off the scent, and that they were also used here to give the cocaine the appearance of a cake.
Get New England news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NECN newsletters.
"You can see some brown swirl on the outside of it," he said. "The cocaine is actually wrapped in the plastic wrap, and the brown that's seen on the packaging is actually coffee grounds."
Still, he said, the Maine State Police K-9 involved in the traffic stop leading to the seizure was prepared for this type of situation.
"They're trained to ignore all other scents," he said.
Chelsey Cochran, a 33-year-old from Winslow, Maine, and John Cedeno, a 25-year-old from New York City, were arrested Tuesday in Gardiner, Maine, according to a news release from the Maine DEA.
Acting on information they received earlier in the week, officers located the two people as they were driving north on the Maine Turnpike in an Audi, according to public safety officials. Maine State Police helped stop the car on 1-295.
After a state police drug dog sniffed the vehicle, officials said, they found what is estimated to be $200,000 worth of cocaine in the trunk.
The representative said officials believe the drugs were being transported into the state for redistribution throughout Kennebec and Somerset counties.
The people who were arrested were taken to Kennebec County Jail. Both were likely to appear in Kennebec County Court on Wednesday, officials said.
It wasn't immediately clear if either had an attorney who could speak to the charges.
