Cat Busted Smuggling Cell Phone Into Russian Jail

On New Year's Eve last year, a cat was caught smuggling tools into a Brazilian prison. News of that attempt apparently spread to Russia, where at least one inmate inside a north Russian jail convinced an outsider to strap two cell phones to a black-and-white cat before sending the cat crawling over the prison's fence. Alas, this cat was also busted before he could make the delivery.

The cat was attempting to smuggle the two phones, plus extra batteries and charges, into Russia's Komi region's Number one corrective labor camp. Officials there said the attempted breach was the first of its kind.

"They have foiled various attempts to smuggle banned objects into Prison Colony Number One before, but in the case of the cat, the prison colony is at a loss: nothing like this has happened in the prison's history," the regional prison service said.

RIA Novosti notes that cats have been used before in Russia for smuggling items into jail, though typically the items have been drugs, not cell phones. One such scheme, discovered by authorities last August, involved stuffing a cat's collar with heroin, sending him into a prison in Russia's Rostov region, and then having newly released prisoners smuggle the now drugless cat out of jail to waiting drug dealers.

The cell phone-smuggling cat's fate is unknown, according to RIA Novosti.

[CNET/RIA Novosti/Image via Shutterstock]

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