Roughly half a tonne of cocaine, 370 rectangular bricks, and on each one the same face: Erling Haaland, in a Norway shirt.
That was what officers found this week after stopping a truck on the Pan-American Highway near Guagua Negro, close to the border city of Tulcán and roughly 246 kilometres north of Quito. The vehicle had been flagged after an anonymous tip received early on Tuesday morning, and the drugs were hidden behind a modified compartment inside the cargo bay.
A woman travelling on Colombian identity documents, named only as María R., was arrested at the scene.
Half a tonne, three price tags
The haul weighed 469 kilograms, or about 1,034 pounds. Ecuadorian authorities put its street value at around $842,000 at home, more than $11 million on the US market and more than $19.6 million in Europe.
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Neither police nor prosecutors have suggested Haaland has any connection to the shipment, the branding or the network behind it.
Why traffickers put a footballer on the box
The practice is not new. Bricks of cocaine are routinely stamped with logos, cartoon characters, brand marks and celebrity portraits, a wholesale label readable to everyone along the supply chain that tells the network which batch produced the shipment and which buyer at the other end has ordered it.
Lionel Messi’s face has turned up on seized packages before. Haaland is simply the newest recruit.
His selection is not hard to explain. Over four matches at the 2026 World Cup this summer, the 26-year-old scored seven goals, finishing level with Messi and Kylian Mbappé as the tournament’s leading scorers to that point, and enough to carry Norway past five-time champions Brazil in the last 16 and into their first ever quarter-final.
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The seized bricks and their new mascot are now in the custody of Ecuadorian anti-narcotics prosecutors.
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