This past Tuesday, alert US Border Patrol agents pulled over a suspicious white Ford Taurus bearing the logo of San Diego Gas & Electric (SDG&E) company on its doors near the border town of Campo, California.

What raised the agents' suspicions is SDG&E vehicles typically encountered in the outback around this community of 3,200 are trucks.

Radioing in for a verification of the car's tag, the vigilent Border Patrol agents learned that the car’s license plate was registered to a Chevy Cavalier.

With something clearly untoward, the Border Patrol agents dutifully attempted to get the driver to pull over. But instead of complying, she made a swift U-turn back toward the border, apparently lost control and crashed.

The woman exited the Taurus and made a dash for Mexico. The Border Patrol agents though were able to catch her before she made it to the border. In the trunk of the car they found more than 200 pounds of marijuana.

The two Border Patrol agents didn't just get a lucky break. Border Patrol agents are actually routinely on the lookout for vehicles bearing what look like official company logos and other ostensibly legitimate identification markings.

The reason? Drug and human smugglers trying to cross the border from Mexico increasingly have resorted to using what the Border Patrol and law enforcement refer to as “cloned” vehicles to conceal their illegal operations. Some of these fake vehicles have actually been disguised as federal vehicles, like vehicles belonging to the US Border Patrol, FEMA, and the National Security Agency.

Since 2005, federal and state law enforcement officials have known that narcotics smugglers have been using cloned Texas Department of Transportation vehicles to smuggle contraband.

This latest incident comes only three months after HSToday investigated the problem in its May cover story, “Beware the Clones."

As HSToday's investigation disclosed, “cloned” vehicles have been reported from Oregon to Georgia. Completely cloned 18-wheelers disguised as Wal-Mart trucks have been reported in Oklahoma, Texas, Kansas, Arkansas, and Missouri, according to law enforcement officials.

In July, Texas Department of Public Safety troopers discovered more than $1 million worth of marijuana inside a Ford F-250 truck bearing fake Halliburton logos near Hebbronville. A utility trailer pulled by the truck also contained bundles of marijuana.

The growing concern over “cloned” vehicles in the employ of illegal purposes was discussed in the Florida Department of Law Enforcement (FDLE) report, “The Road Map to Cloned Vehicles.”

In its nationwide survey of recent "cloned" vehicles completed in January and distributed to federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies, a troubling pattern emerged. The classified FDLE report disclosed that more than a dozen incidents involving both faked official and commercial vehicles had occurred between 2005 and 2007.

The FDLE study cautioned that "... the use of government vehicles with official markings, especially those associated with friendly military, government and public safety entities, could be a means of delivering a vehicle-borne explosive device to a target site. This method could allow terrorists to bypass established security protocols and strike hardened, high-value targets."

Similarly, HSToday.us reported in March that federal, state, and local law enforcement authorities also are concerned about the growing thefts of official law enforcement credentials, uniforms, weapons, and other equipment that could be used to “infiltrate” “high-profile” events to carry out terrorists attacks.

The concern about potential terrorists penetrating mass public gatherings was highlighted in the Department of Homeland Security's (DHS) official threat assessment for Super Bowl XLII which HSToday.us first reported.