No body of evidence: Police pull over speeding hearse, find caviar-filled coffin
Traffic police stopped a speeding hearse en route to the city of Komsomolsk-on-Amur in the Russian Far East. It turned out the driver was in a hurry to smuggle 500kg of black caviar.
The contraband was hidden in the coffin and covered with funeral wreaths.
The man behind the wheel first told police he was transporting the body of a dead woman from a nearby village in Khabarovsk. Officers asked the driver to show them the interior of the vehicle. The body of the deceased woman was nowhere to be found.
There were bags under funeral flowers, with plastic containers filled with caviar instead, according to Lieutenant Colonel of Police Elena Alekseeva.
Two employees from a local funeral services agency have been detained. The men said they had been contacted by a stranger who asked them to carry his relative's body to one of the morgues in nearby Khabarovsk. Several unknown men later put the coffin into the hearse, a pair of funeral employees told police. The driver and his companion were promised 25,000 rubles (about $400) for the trip, RIA Novosti reported.
