Tourists Find $600k Worth of Cocaine on South Carolina Beach

Seashells. Coins. Keys. Crabs. The occasional cell phone.

You’ll find a bevy of items on virtually every beach. What you likely won’t find is more than a half-million dollars in, uh, merchandise.

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But that’s what happened to a family of tourists on vacation in South Carolina earlier this month when they found what was described as a “large, dark object” in the water at Fripp Island.

After loading the 44-pound package on a golf cart and taking it back to their vacation house, the family got the shock of their lives—cocaine, with an estimated street value of $600,000.

Suspecting the worst after cutting open the package and finding a white powdery substance, Justus Holland and his family immediately called the Beaufort County Sheriff's Office.

Police confirmed it was cocaine.

"This is a very infrequent occurrence," Major Bob Bromage of the Sheriff’s Office said. "This happened maybe a handful of times in the past decade.”

Bromage guessed that the package washed up as a result of Hurricane Dorian last month, though he is uncertain of its origin.

“The Beaufort County Sheriff's Office and the DEA are investigating and attempting to establish the cocaine's origin and intended destination," Bromage said.

Bromage added that “we encourage people who find packages like this to call us first and let us investigate. There could have been any number of things in that bag that could have been dangerous."