A 39-year-old Baltimore woman was arrested at Portland International Airport last month after officers said they found roughly 60 pounds of marijuana packed into her checked luggage, and investigators believe she wasn’t traveling alone. Janay Mateo was stopped at a United Airlines boarding gate before her flight, and the case has since expanded across state lines to a second traveler now facing charges in Pennsylvania.
Port of Portland police arrested and cited Mateo on Aug. 31, according to KPTV, after screeners discovered marijuana in her luggage. Investigators say they ultimately found 50 vacuum-sealed packages of marijuana spread across her two checked suitcases, totaling roughly 59.5 pounds. Port of Portland police intercepted Mateo and her second bag at the United Airlines gate, and according to The Oregonian/OregonLive, airport staff and police had already discovered about 30 pounds of marijuana in sealed bags at a checked-luggage processing point around 3:45 a.m. before another roughly 30 pounds turned up in her second bag.
Mateo admitted the second suitcase also contained marijuana and consented to a search of it, the KPTV report states. She told detectives she planned to take the marijuana to Maryland to resell some of it, while keeping most of it for her own use. Per the same account, she said she smoked marijuana daily and intended to smoke most of what she was carrying herself.
A Second Traveler Surfaces in Pennsylvania
Security footage reviewed by investigators showed Mateo had been traveling with a companion who checked three suitcases separately, and Portland police alerted Pennsylvania authorities once that traveler landed. Officers there identified and arrested the man, and according to the same KPTV report, they found approximately 65 pounds of suspected marijuana in his luggage, along with a $62,195 receipt listing marijuana strains and pricing…