The rise of drone crime and how cops can stop it

It was supposed to be an easy $1,000 job. All 25-year-old Jorge Edwin Rivera had to do was pilot a drone, carrying a lunchbox filled with 13 pounds of methamphetamine, from one side of the US-Mexico border to the other where an accomplice could retrieve the smuggled cargo. What he didn't count on was Border Patrol agents spotting the UAV in flight and tracking it back to his hiding spot, 2,000 yards from the national divide. This isn't the first time that smugglers have used commercially-available drones to carry contraband. In 2015, the Border Patrol caught a two people dropping off 28 pounds of heroin in Calexico, California, and, in the same year, caught another drug ring delivering 30 pounds of cannabis to San Luis, Arizona.