Anaya’s customers typically took advantage of this deal when their fiendishly loud subwoofers blew out or their fiberglass speaker boxes developed hairline cracks. But in late January 2009, a man whom Anaya knew only as Esteban called for help with a more exotic product: a hidden compartment that Anaya had installed in his Ford F-150 pickup truck. Over the years, these secret stash spots—or traps, as they’re known in automotive slang—have become a popular luxury item among the wealthy and shady alike. This particular compartment was located behind the truck’s backseat, which Anaya had rigged with a set of hydraulic cylinders linked to the vehicle’s electrical system. The only way to make the seat slide forward and reveal its secret was by pressing and holding four switches simultaneously: two for the power door locks and two for the windows. (...)
The forefather of modern trap making was a French mechanic who went by the name of Claude Marceau (possibly a pseudonym). According to a 1973 Justice Department report, Marceau personally welded 160 pounds of heroin into the frame of a Lancia limousine that was shipped to the US in 1970—a key triumph for the fabled French Connection, the international smuggling ring immortalized in film.
Traps like Marceau’s may be difficult to detect, but they require significant time and expertise to operate. The only way to load and unload one of these “dumb” compartments is by taking a car apart, piece by piece. That makes economic sense for multinational organizations like the French Connection, which infrequently transport massive amounts of narcotics between continents. But domestic traffickers, who must ferry small shipments between cities on a regular basis, can’t sacrifice an entire car every time they make a delivery. They need to be able to store and retrieve their contraband with ease and then reuse the vehicles again and again.
Early drug traffickers stashed their loads in obvious places: wheel wells, spare tires, the nooks of engine blocks. Starting in the early 1980s, however, they switched to what the Drug Enforcement Administration refers to as “urban traps”: medium-size compartments concealed behind electronically controlled facades. The first such stash spots were usually located in the doors of luxury sedans; trap makers, who are often moonlighting auto body specialists, would slice out the door panels and then attach them to the motors that raised and lowered the windows. They soon moved on to building traps in dashboards, seats, and roofs, with button-operated doors secured by magnetic locks. Over time, the magnets gave way to hydraulic cylinders, which made the doors harder to dislodge during police inspections.
By the early 1990s, however, drug traffickers had discovered that these compartments had two major design flaws. The first was that the buttons and switches that controlled the traps’ doors were aftermarket additions to the cars. This made them too easy to locate—police were being trained to look for any widgets that hadn’t been installed on the assembly line.
Second, opening the traps was no great challenge once a cop identified the appropriate button: The compartment’s door would respond to a single press. Sometimes the police would even open traps by accident; a knee or elbow would brush against a button during a vigorous search, and a brick of cocaine would appear as if by magic.
Trap makers responded to the traffickers’ complaints by tapping into the internal electrical systems of cars. They began to connect their compartments to those systems with relays, electromagnetic switches that enable low-power circuits to control higher-power circuits. (Relays are the reason, for example, that the small act of turning an ignition key can start a whole engine.) Some relays won’t let current flow through until several input circuits have been completed—in other words, until several separate actions have been performed. By wiring these switches into cars, trap makers could build compartments that were operated not by aftermarket buttons but by a car’s own factory-installed controls.
by Brendan I. Koerner, Wired | Read more:
Illustration: Paul Pope
