The seized items. (Courtesy of Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services)

The drone would have ferried CDs with pornography, synthetic drugs, tobacco, and other contraband into a maximum-security prison, police said. Instead, the two men who planned to fly the drone are now sitting in prison themselves.

Officers from the Western Correctional Institution in Cumberland spotted a car on Saturday night on the side road that runs along a state prison complex, which houses two maximum-security facilities. The owner of the vehicle had been suspected for some time of plotting to use the drone, in conjunction with at least one inmate, to smuggle contraband.

When law enforcement searched the car, they found the drone, a handgun, and an assortment of contraband. Correctional staff also searched the cell of the inmate and found additional items. The two men in the vehicle are now being held in Cumberland themselves.

Although DPSCS believes it was the first such incident in Maryland, it is not the first time that enterprising criminals have used drones to deliver contraband to prisoners. After a package filled with tobacco, marijuana, and heroin fell from the sky into an Ohio prison courtyard, 75 prisoners were involved in an all-out brawl, and several incidents have been recorded in South Carolina.