O'Hare Airport

Woman arrested at O'Hare with $238K of cocaine in her wheelchair cushions: Feds

Elaine Perez-Pena, who had a layover at O’Hare International Airport on a flight from Brazil to New Jersey, was previously convicted of smuggling drugs in 2022, authorities say

The bright colorful sun reflects off of the terminal building at Chicago’s O’hare Airport in Illinois.
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The bright colorful sun reflects off of the terminal building at Chicago’s O’hare Airport in Illinois.

Federal agents found 14 kilograms of cocaine hidden in the cushions of a wheelchair belonging to a woman whose plane landed at O’Hare International Airport over the weekend during a trip from Brazil to Newark, New Jersey.

Elaine Perez-Pena, 35, had previously pleaded guilty in 2022 to smuggling almost three kilograms of cocaine in her suitcase during a trip from the Dominican Republic to New York where she was arrested at John F. Kennedy International Airport in 2021. She was given a sentence of time served after spending about nine months in custody for that offense.

On Saturday, agents with the Department of Homeland Security Investigations stopped Perez-Pena after she got off a plane in a wheelchair at O’Hare. They decided to give her a “secondary inspection” because of her smuggling conviction in 2022.

She told inspectors her leg hurt and she was escorted to a restroom, officials said. They examined her luggage but found nothing suspicious. Then they put the wheelchair through an X-ray machine and found “anomalies” in the density of the cushions, and a drug-sniffing dog alerted officers that narcotics were present.

An official drilled into the cushions and saw white powder on the tip of the drill bit. Authorities said they discovered 14 one-kilogram packages of cocaine in the cushions, each one worth at least $17,000 — or at least $238,000 for all of them.

Later, Perez-Pena was pacing without difficulty in a holding cell and allegedly told authorities she didn’t need her cane or a wheelchair to get around.

Perez-Pena grew up in Boston, but in 2020 moved to the Dominican Republic, where she abused drugs and agreed to fly a suitcase of cocaine to New York for $7,000, a defense attorney said in a court filing in her New York case.

“Like most couriers, she was the most expendable, least knowledgeable, and most likely to be arrested of the conspirators. To her credit, she was truthful with the arresting agents about what she had done immediately after her arrest,” her attorney wrote.

Last year, federal agents in Houston said they found 12 kilograms of cocaine in a hidden compartment of a motorized wheelchair at George Bush International Airport. And in 2022, federal agents found about 10 kilograms of cocaine in a wheelchair at an airport in Charlotte, North Carolina.

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