A Guatemalan man is behind bars in the Rio Grande Valley after authorities learned he had swallowed 80 pellets filed with heroin in a botched drug smuggling attempt.
U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) arrested 28-year-old Marco Vincio Lopez-Davila on Tuesday.
The Guatemalan man drove up from Mexico in a taxi cab at Brownsville's Veteran's International Bridge.
Customs officers sent Lopez-Davila to secondary inspection where he allegedly admitted he was smuggling heroin inside his body.
Authorities took him to a medical facility where an X-Ray revealed that he had swallowed some 80 pellets of heroin.
Lopez-Davila told investigators that he was supposed to get paid $8,000 dollars to deliver the drugs to Philadelphia.
Court records show that Lopez-Davila was medically cleared and appeared before U.S. Magistrate Judge Ronald Morgan in Brownsville on Friday morning.
Investigators told Action 4 News that Lopez-Davila is from San Miguel Pataya, Guatemala.
Judge Morgan denied bond for Lopez-Davila until a Wednesday morning hearing.
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