Chennai-based YouTuber Sabir Ali was arrested for allegedly running a front, a souvenir shop named AirHub at the Chennai airport, for an international gold smuggling operation. Customs officials alleged that Ali employed and trained seven men to smuggle gold hidden in their rectums.

The smuggling operation was busted on June 29-30, and 29-year-old Ali and his seven employees were arrested. Preliminary investigation revealed that these men were getting Rs 15,000 as salary per month and a surplus of Rs 5,000 for every “ball” of gold they smuggled. It is suspected that the cartel contacted Ali through his YouTube channel ‘shopping boyz’.

Each consignment consisted of nearly 300 grams of gold paste or powder packaged in silicone balls. Smugglers would get these packages in the transit lounge from carriers who had brought it from abroad, concealing the same in their rectums to be delivered outside the airport to predetermined clients.

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The men have allegedly smuggled 267kg of gold worth Rs 167 crore in a span of two months. According to estimates by customs officials, Ali is said to have pocketed around Rs 2.5 crore within those two months. Speaking to officers, one of the alleged smugglers confessed he had made 80 such trips within two months.

These men were trained to practice holding the gold while doing squats so that they wouldn’t get caught by customs. “Training for them starts 10 days before them being assigned the job. With the practice, it becomes easy to hold gold in their rectum for an hour-sometimes even more-even if we make them squat,” the customs officer said. The officers found that the men started with a single ball before graduating to three weighing nearly 1kg. June 29 marked the turn with one suspect being caught with three consignments confirmed by an X-ray.

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