Smugglers will go to great lengths to hide their prized possessions, which oftentimes involves getting creative. A man known as a “kingpin” smuggler in New York has now been sentenced for attempting to conceal finches in two packages of hair curlers.
Insaf Ali was arrested back in January 2022 at John F. Kennedy International Airport before boarding a flight to Guyana. Airport security searched his luggage and revealed two packages of hair curlers that had allegedly become essential to his unique trade.
The plastic cylinders acted as the perfect size to smuggle finches, which he would from Guyana into the United States. According to prosecutors, wild finches are known for being prized in birdsong competitions as they tend to sing more aggressively that locally bred birds.
The smuggler had participated in birdsong competitions as a child in Guyana, which led him to try to find a similar emotional support community in the United States when he emigrated there in 1984.
Ali was cast as a leader in the trade of finches between Guyana and New York as he has had previous charges against him for the same crime. “He is infamous in his community as one of New York’s finch-smuggling kingpins,” prosecutors alleged in a sentencing memo.
The smuggler was sentenced in New York federal court to one year and one day in prison. Christine Delince, Ali’s defense attorney, said in a sentencing memo that poor health drove Ali to smuggle in birds from Guyana for emotional support. In a statement to the judge, Ali pledged to “make amends for my life-changing error.”
Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/nation/2023/02/15/new-york-finch-smuggler-guyana/