A very lucky, and ultimately very responsible, individual at a Texas car auction managed to get their new vehicle all the way home before realizing its true value of around $850,000.

So what’s the catch? Was the car some rare barn find? Is it the only existing turbine-powered Saab in the world? Did Elvis have sex in it?

Well it’s none of those things. In fact, the value inside the car has nothing to do with the car itself. What’s as rare as a barn find, as powerful as a turbine engine, and as sexy as Elvis? Cocaine, baby.

That’s right. Somebody in Laredo, Texas bought a car at an auction, and then later found a hidden compartment with a small fortune of what looked to be over a dozen carefully-packaged coke bricks, according to the .

Maybe the new vehicle owner didn’t comprehend the true value of their find, because instead of finding a way to sell it, take the money and split off to the Virgin Islands in a luxury yacht with the tag still hanging off the back, they called the cops.

The cops showed up to find 17 bundles in a hidden compartment. A K-9 unit discovered a second secret compartment with another 17 bundles, with a final weigh-in of around 75 pounds of cocaine. There are no details on who found the drugs, where they came from, or what the make and model of the auction car were.

It’s also not clear what sort of auction the vehicle was purchased from. If it was an impound lot, that could make sense. But I’d rather like to believe this was some sort of smuggling plot. Someone drives the car into the country with all of the drugs, where it’s then sold at an auction that’s assumed to be easy to rig. But maybe I’ve been watching too much TV.

Ultimately, of course, getting dozens of pounds of narcotics out of the hands of someone who will distribute it is ultimately the right thing to do. But I don’t think the police reward for turning in discovered drugs comes anywhere close to matching $850,000.

Via