During the last two decades, thousands of couriers from Nigeria and other West African countries have been arrested. To avert suspicions, traffickers from Nigeria have begun to recruit couriers of virtually every nationality. American teenage girls have been used, as well as members of the U.S. military. Typically, one courier picks up a shipment in Bangkok, flies with it to a transit country, like Indonesia or Egypt, where the shipment is handed off to a second courier, who brings it to another transit country or directly to the United States. The use of multiple couriers is arranged to conceal any direct link to Thailand, the source country of much heroin.
Traffickers often place many couriers on the same flight.
Even if most of the couriers on the flight are caught, a number will inevitably get through during the confusion. The markups on heroin trafficking are so high that if only a small percentage of the product gets through, the traffickers will still reap huge profits. But as a result of increasing law enforcement pressure, Nigeria-based traffickers are beginning to switch from courier shipments to the use of express mail packages. Once in the United States, the product is sold by the ethnic Nigerian traffickers to inner-city gangs, like the Blackstone Rangers and the Vice Lords of Chicago, who, in turn, sell it on street corners and in school yards. Ethnic Nigerian traffickers are most active in U.S. cities with large concentrations of Nigerian nationals.