Women ride latest wave of drug smuggling
Mark Russell
January 20, 2008
THE Melbourne grandmother was returning home from Vietnam with her daughter when federal police swooped.
Acting on a tip-off, officers stopped the woman at Melbourne Airport. As they frisked her, a small, tightly wrapped package the size of an egg fell to the floor.
It was heroin, according to police. She had been allegedly hiding it in her underpants.
Thi Que Tran, 71, of Ascot Vale, and her daughter, Thi Minh Doan, 49, were arrested and taken to Royal Melbourne Hospital. There, police claim, the older woman passed another package of heroin which she had swallowed. Each pack allegedly contained 70 grams of heroin.
Her daughter was also found to be carrying internally a package containing 60 grams of heroin. The total value of the drugs was estimated at $60,000.
Thi Minh Doan pleaded guilty in the County Court on Thursday to a charge of importing a marketable quantity of heroin and was jailed for a minimum of two years. Her mother, an Australian citizen since 1993, has yet to plead to her own drug smuggling charge and is due in court on February 14.
The mother and daughter case is one of more than a dozen in the past year involving women accused of smuggling drugs into Australia.
Customs suspect the number of women smugglers is rising but are waiting for federal police — who make arrests at airports — to confirm the number and sex of airline passengers caught with drugs last year.
In recent Melbourne cases, Karen Beresford, 56, was arrested on November 29 after allegedly trying to smuggle the highly addictive drug "ice" (crystal methamphetamine) inside two bottles of hair-care products.
She was stopped after arriving on a flight from Malaysia. An X-ray of her bags indicated something was concealed in a bottle of shampoo and a bottle of conditioner. Customs officers allegedly found about 200 grams of ice wrapped inside two plastic bags. Beresford, of Southbank, will appear in court again on March 7.
In September, an American woman, 20, was charged with smuggling 265 grams of cocaine hidden inside her jacket on arrival from Los Angeles. And in Sydney, another American woman is suspected of leaving almost six kilograms of cocaine worth $660,000 in a United Airlines aircraft toilet on December 2. The woman, who has left Australia, is believed to have made a planned "drop" for collection by corrupt airport workers.
A customs spokesperson said it seemed women were being recruited to smuggle drugs in the belief they were more likely to avoid detection.
According to its 2006-07 annual report, customs made 1615 drug seizures, obtaining a total of 1531.36 kilograms of the four main illicit drug types (cocaine, heroin, amphetamine-type stimulants and ecstasy).
A worrying trend was a rise in the number of passengers trying to smuggle heroin into Australia inside their bodies, with seven detections in 2005-06 of drugs weighing about 1.2 kilograms, compared with 25 detections in 2006-07 weighing 7.1 kilograms.
Customs and federal police have set up an overseas awareness campaign targeting high-risk countries, including Vietnam and Cambodia.
Journey of substance
■ January 5: A Canadian woman, 24, and a man, 43, are arrested at Brisbane International Airport after a flight from Hong Kong, accused of attempting to smuggle cocaine.
■ January 5: An Australian woman, 51, is arrested at Sydney International Airport after a flight from Cambodia. She was found to have swallowed 119 pellets suspected of being heroin.
■ December 25: Two Zambian women, aged 29 and 31, are arrested at Sydney International Airport after a flight from Dubai, having allegedly ingested more than 50 pellets of heroin.
■ December 21: In Adelaide, a woman, 23, is arrested after a flight from Sydney, allegedly carrying the drug ice and cocaine hidden in shampoo and baby powder containers.
■ December 10: A Sydney woman, 47, is charged with attempting to import 1.96 kilograms of cocaine.
■ November 29: An Australian woman, 56, is arrested at Melbourne Airport allegedly carrying 200 grams of the drug ice.
