A family of seven from Michigan tried unsuccessfully to smuggle more than $93,000 in U.S. currency onto a Middle East-bound flight from Philadelphia International Airport this week, officials with U.S. Customs and Border Protection said.
A husband and wife and their five children, who are American citizens, were caught with the cash as they passed through customs Wednesday to get on a plane to Qatar, a tiny kingdom on the Persian Gulf. The country is a peninsula attached to Saudi Arabia.
"The father reported verbally and in writing that they possessed $12,000," according to a statement from Customs and Border Protection (CBP). "During the inspection, CBP officers discovered a combined $93,393 concealed on the man’s, the woman’s, and their adult child’s bodies."
The cash was confiscated, but customs officials eventually returned $3,393 to the family and allowed them to continue on to Qatar.
No criminal charges were filed. A spokesman for the agency said the currency was concealed on the bodies of the two adults and in a winter jacket pocket of one of the adult children.
Qatar was not the family's final destination, according to CBP spokesman Stephen Sapp, who declined to discuss what the family told agents at the airport because they could eventually petition for the return of their money.
The unusual incident comes at a time when Qatar is facing strong pressure from several of its Middle Eastern neighbors, including Saudi Arabia, over allegations of harboring terrorists.
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Last week, 13 countries from the Middle East and northern Africa demanded Qatar comply with numerous sanctions that include shutting down the Arabian broadcast network, Al Jazeera. Leaders in some Muslim-majority countries believe Al Jazeera gives a voice to political and militant groups that in the last decade have been behind populist uprisings in several countries.
Sapp, the CBP spokesman, said travelers who want to take currency with them into or out of the country need to remember two simple rules:
"Travelers can take as little or as much currency as they wish," he said. "But travelers must truthfully report how much currency they possess, or face consequences, including seizure and potential criminal charges."
