Remains the question as to why the Australian police informed the Cambodian authorities about alleged drug smuggling by an Australian national to Australia, when they could have set up and arrested the drug traffickers ready to reception the drugs in Australia.
Australian love scam victim finally freed after six-year Cambodian ordeal
Luke McMahon
9 hrs ago
An Australian woman serving a 23-year prison sentence in Cambodia for drug smuggling has been declared innocent and set free after the Cambodian Court of Appeal agreed that she was the victim of an internet love scam.

The 46-year-old former Queensland primary school teacher, Yoshe Ann Taylor, landed back in Australia this morning to reunite with her two children, whom she has not spoken to in five years.

The Cambodian court accepted in a hearing on Good Friday that Ms Taylor was lured to the capital, Phnom Penh, in late 2013 on the promise of love and a career in the arts and crafts business.

In reality, she was the victim of a highly organised scam run by an international drug smuggling syndicate, which tricked her into carrying luggage through Phnom Penh airport with 2.2 kilograms of heroin concealed in its lining. The Australian Federal Police had tipped off Cambodian authorities, who stopped her at the airport.

Six years later, early on Thursday, Ms Taylor arrived back at Brisbane airport. Meeting her Australian-based lawyer, Alex Wilson, she said nothing, but looked shell-shocked.
https://www.msn.com/en-nz/news/world/au ... ar-AAB7A75

No such luck for her fellow mule Charlene Savarino, daughter, I believe, of a well known Phnom Penh pizza restranteur....

https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50602383/c ... smuggling/

libgen wrote: ↑Thu May 09, 2019 10:38 pm No such luck for her fellow mule Charlene Savarino, daughter, I believe, of a well known Phnom Penh pizza restranteur....
https://www.khmertimeskh.com/50602383/c ... smuggling/

From the above link, for those who don't remember this case that dates back to five years ago now:

In 2013, Ms Taylor was among three foreigners convicted of attempting to smuggle more than two kilograms of heroin from Cambodia to Australia, along with Precious Chneme Nwoko, a Nigerian national, and Charlene Savarino, a French national.

The three were arrested on September 18 that year when they tried to smuggle the drugs in bags through Phnom Penh International Airport. They were convicted by the Phnom Penh Municipal Court on May 24, 2014.

Mr Nwoko, who was convicted of drug trafficking, is still serving time in prison. He was sentenced to 27 years. Ms Savarino is also still serving 25 years in prison.

"Precious Max" at work; the story of how he lured his Australian women victims:

An innocent abroad
The mother. The online relationship. The scam that’s destroying lives. This is how vulnerable Australians are being lured into carrying illegal drugs for a powerful international cartel.
Updated 12 August 2019
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-12/ ... epX8-61J7s

Just been reading through previous posts on this topic, plus an earlier thread from the time of the original bust.
Some of the speculation seems to be incorrect, now that the full story has come out.

Outline
Around the time of Yoshe Taylor's bust there were three other identical cases - one other woman and two men. All Australians.
The heroin was identically packed, and physically matched, in all cases.

The other common denominators were
- both women were given the H by Precious Max.
- both men were given the H by Charlene.

Yoshes Taylor was duped into an elaborate and well constructed business deal. She had already knocked back Precious on the luuurve thing. But she was very vulnerable on both, love and finances. Single mum with kids.
The package that she got busted for was given to her by Charlene who claimed to work for the company that had just employed Yoshe. (a cambodian export company owned by a friend of Precious).
She did not appear to be one of Precious's girl friends. She was supposed to be part of the "legitimate business"
Charlene certainly was no dupe, quite the opposite it seems.

The AFP did not charge the other three mules, who all got busted at aus airports, because they quickly realised that they were just very naive fools, and for sure knew nothing of the heroin.

It seems to me that the right two perps are in gaol, in cambodia.
The others, especially Ms Taylor, have certainly been taught a very hard lesson for their stupidity.

I will note that Mr Precious seems to have been an extremely seductive man, even our own Jerry Atrick found him to be a charming fellow. (earlier post). So maybe it is easy to see how these lonely women were conned.
Some guys make an art form out of preying on naive and vulnerable women, this guy seems to have been an expert.

The AFP believes that he is responsible for many more similar cases, and there are reports that he is still running this operation from gaol, with the help of his mates.

Aussie mum tricked into becoming a drug mule by an African lothario opens up on her six years inside a squalid Cambodian jail
Yoshe Taylor, 47, was conned into smuggling drugs from Cambodia by scammer
Ms Taylor met the man on a dating app and eventually flew overseas to meet him
Unbeknownst to her he had stitched drugs into a bag to take back to Australia
She spent six years in different Cambodian prisons, including notorious Prey Sar
Each cell inside the women's Prey Sar jail had 99 inmates and not enough beds .
Single mother-of-two Yoshe Taylor, 47, from Brisbane, was duped by her online
African boyfriend into trying to bring two kilograms of heroin back to Australia from Cambodia.
Stupidity is no excuse and she was lucky to be caught in Cambodia other Asian countries
it would have been a death sentence.
She looked in the bag to make sure there was nothing that shouldn't be - but Cambodian police had already received a tip off from Australian authorities about her movements.

Airport customs officers searched Ms Taylor's bag and found just over 2 kilograms
of heroin that had been sewn into the lining of the bag.
Aussie police could have let her go to Australia of course and arrested the scum who put the drugs in her bag they were aware of but were probably put off as that was too much like efficient good police work!

Happy ending ..The law finally caught up with Precious during a raid on the drug den where he and other members of his syndicate lived. He was sentenced to 27 years jail. I am sure this will save other foolish people being taken in by this smooth talking Nigerian drug trafficker.

AFP admits role in Queensland woman Yoshe Taylor's Cambodian prison hell
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-08-19/ ... e/11287772





Stupidity isn t a crime, if it were most of all of us would have served fairly long stretches by now.