Brick of cocaine found floating at a Florida Keys dock, sheriff’s office says

A resident turned over a brick of cocaine found floating near a Florida Keys dock to the Monroe County Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday afternoon, the agency said.

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The 2.2-pound, or one-kilogram, package, stamped with the number “333,” was found on Summerland Key in the Lower Keys around 2 p.m., the sheriff’s office said.

As is protocol, the drugs were turned over to the U.S. Border Patrol.

Bricks of cocaine and bales of marijuana washing up in the Florida Keys or being found out at sea is a lot more common than people may think.

They are typically lost packages from illegal smuggling runs either destined for the Keys or on their way to buyers in other locations.

The kilos of cocaine typically have some sort of image on them, not to advertise where they came from, but rather to tell smugglers who bought the loads where they’re supposed to be delivered to, Monroe Sheriff Rick Ramsay told the Miami Herald after another drug wash-up in July. That brick had an image of a lion stamped on the package.

“They generally don’t want to advertise where it’s coming from, who’s selling it,” Ramsay said. “It’s who owns the load.”

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Customs and Border Protection, which the U.S. Border Patrol is a part of, takes the loads for intelligence reasons, Ramsay said.

Federal investigators then try to determine how long the drugs have been in the water and check their sources to see if anyone was expecting a delivery in that time range, the sheriff said.

There have also been some recent high-profile criminal investigations into Keys locals making a business out of distributing and dealing drug shipments that they find at sea.

A federal grand jury indicted a 66-year-old charter fishing captain in August on drug-trafficking charges following his arrest in January after he sold an undercover agent a kilo of cocaine for $10,000, according to court records.

After Bradford Piciarello was arrested, agents and deputies found 23 more kilograms of cocaine, all stamped with “332,” in his storage unit on 42nd Street in Marathon, his arrest report states. According to the sheriff’s office, which led the investigation, those drugs were found at sea.

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