Man's Socks Seemed Especially Bulky at Airport

A suitcase stuffed with socks allegedly held far more than dirty laundry at Tokyo's Haneda Airport. Police say 23-year-old Daniel Isaac Velasco Baltazar, a Mexican national, was arrested after customs officers found about 200 live lizards crammed into 22 pairs of socks in his luggage on Aug. 8, the Japan Times reports. The haul reportedly included nine Mexican alligator lizards, a species tightly regulated under the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species of Wild Fauna and Flora treaty. The Independent notes that this type of lizard is indeed considered endangered.

One lizard was found dead inside the suitcase. Authorities say Baltazar, who's said to have flown in from South Korea, didn't declare the reptiles and has admitted to attempting to bring them in to Japan without permission. An anonymous tip in July warned police he might be smuggling lizards ahead of a reptile expo there. Investigators say Baltazar bought them in Mexico for just a few dollars each; some could fetch more than $600 in Japan. "If there's a market for it, people will attempt to smuggle it," Keith Jeffries of K2 Security Screening Group and a former federal security director at Los Angeles International Airport tells Fox News Digital.