In San Jose, a suburban psychologist who bought a used Chrysler minivan for $14,000 in cash ended up driving around for 15 months with half a million dollars in Colombian marching powder unknowingly stashed in the panels of the vehicle. Dr. Charles Preston first noticed something fishy when he discovered the driver's side window wouldn't go down all the way, but as he told the San Jose Mercury News, "he figured he could live with it since the Town and Country van had an excellent air-conditioning system."

Dr. Preston went on to put a solid 6,000 miles on the vehicle before finally taking it in to have the brakes checked back in August. At that point an eager manager with a nose for these kinds of things (mechanical troubles, we mean) offered to look in to the window problem and discovered what he initially thought was misplaced insulation installed inside the door panel. Once they realized the plastic-wrapped bricks were actually a small fortune of Colombia's finest, cops searched the vehicle and found 19 packages of cocaine stashed in the body panels and above the back wheels.

A manager at Thrifty Car Sales, where Dr. Preston purchased the vehicle, offered to replace it with a clean new ride for free. Police haven't yet been able to figure out where all that drugs came from, but the van previously belonged to a rental car agency. So it's entirely possible that it was rented out while loaded down with kilos of coke. For what it's worth, Dr. Preston purchased the vehicle to haul food that he pays for himself to feed people living on the street.

[SJMerc]