Plot Synopsis

Using first-person interviews with law-enforcement officials and smugglers as well as archival and new undercover video footage, EXTREME SMUGGLING chronciles the bizarre and disturbing ways that criminals try to feed the United States' insatiable demand for drugs, exotic animals and guns. This series explores how criminals access and distribute their contraband, using their network and lax U.S. law to get their goods to buyers, while also revealing seizures, raids and confiscations, showing what it takes to capture these criminals. Plus, new footage provides an unprecedented glimpse at the lives, inner workings and even homes of the smugglers themselves. Each 60-minute episode features different contraband, including: drugs, which requires two episodes to tell the whole story, showing how smugglers get their drugs to market by land, sea or air -- even if that requires helicopter drops near the Canadian border or hiding their contraband inside bars of soap; animals, documenting the cruel and clandestine world of illegal wildlife trafficking, where millions of people pay big bucks for rare and exotic animals; and weapons, chronicling how criminals access and distribute weapons on the black market through corrupt gun dealers, straw buys and lack of regulation at gun shows.