Recently the TSA found $10,000 cold ones stashed in a traveler’s slow cooker. The interesting photo has been circulating the internet after being shared by the TSA. The traveler was ultimately free to travel (with the money and the cooker) but we have so many questions.
The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) will often share weird or unique things their officers find during the airport screening process. As an organization charged with ensuring that air travel is more secure, the TSA rigorously screens passengers at the airport. It’s not uncommon to find unusual or strange or even illegal things hidden away by travelers who think they can get one over on the TSA. But, this recent find was an odd one – especially because it wasn’t illegal. Just weird.
TSA Agents working at Boston’s Logan Airport tweeted a picture of a slow cooker with wads of cash stashed around the top of it that was found when a woman tried to take it through security as her carryon before her flight to New York City.
Unsurprisingly, the item was flagged for further inspection.
After a more detailed investigation, the woman was determined to have done nothing wrong and was eventually allowed to resume her trip – after missing her flight of course.
What’s odd about this encounter is, well, several things, to be honest. For example:
Why is this woman traveling with a slow cooker? It’s an odd thing to travel with, I suppose. Maybe she was heading to a huge family get-together and was committed to making that pulled pork the fam loves. Or maybe she just has to have her favorite kitchen instrument with her in case a sudden need to cook a lamb chop breaks out? Traveling with a slow cooker (or any sort of “cooker” for that matter) isn’t illegal, but you can guaran-frickin-tee it’s going to get the TSA’s attention….you know, bombs and stuff…
Why is she traveling with $10k? It’s not illegal to travel with big sums of cash and depending on how big or small the bills are it could pose a little bit of a packing challenge. In fact, it’s only when traveling internationally that travelers must declare if they have $10,000 or more dollars traveling with them. There is no limit on the amount of cash you can travel with domestically. You can literally bring as much cash as you can fit in your slow cookers…but why not Western Union it. Or Paypal. Or Venmo. Or crypto.
Why is she hiding the $10k in the slow cooker? Why not a suitcase? A money belt? Why the slow cooker? It’s just weird. It’s probably an odd-shaped kind of package which means there’s a small risk it might have to be gate-checked which means that $10k could leave your sight for the flight. Gulp. If I had 10gs with me, I’d keep it a lot closer than my cooker. But then again, I don’t have 10gs in cash laying about…so….
2 comments
Here’s my guess: 1) she was Korean. Koreans have an affinity for their particular brand of rice cooker and WILL take them everywhere, especially if she’s going to visit her son at his college abroad and wants to ensure he’s eating right. 2) Koreans like cash and will not miss a change to repatriate up to the limit ($10K) when they are travelling from Korea to the US. She probably figured no one would look inside a rice cooker if she got up and, for instance, went to the bathroom on that long flight.
As long she checked out clean and the money was hers, really don’t see where it is anybody’else’s business or concern. Law enforcement was able to prove the money was hers legally and that should be the end of the conversation. Was pretty obvious she wasn’t hurting no one.