Five Taiwanese men smuggled almost HK$6 million worth of Ice and ketamine into Hong Kong after being given free Cambodia trip and promised cash reward
Customs officers at Hong Kong International Airport found bags of suspected drugs wrapped around their bodies
Three of the men said strangers had contacted them by phone and on WeChat to offer them free trip to Cambodia with a cash reward upon return
Jasmine Siu
7 May, 2019
Five Taiwanese men who trafficked HK$5.9 million worth of drugs into Hong Kong after strangers gave them a free trip and promised a cash reward were on Tuesday jailed for up to 12 years and two months each.

The High Court heard the men, aged between 18 and 24, were en route from Cambodia to Taichung on October 10, 2017 when customs officers at Hong Kong International Airport found bags of suspected drugs wrapped around their bodies.

Those bags were found to contain 264.4 grams of crystal methamphetamine – more commonly known as Ice – and 7.8 kilograms of ketamine. The combined street value was an estimated HK$5.91 million (US$753,456).

Three of the men later told investigators strangers had contacted them by phone and on WeChat to offer them a free trip to Cambodia with a cash reward upon return.

Unidentified men in Cambodia then tied the packages to their bodies before they boarded the flight to Hong Kong, the court heard.

Defence counsel pleaded for lenient sentences on account of the men’s timely guilty pleas entered in April and that they would be serving time in a foreign land for a crime committed out of economic necessity.
They also urged the court to consider the drugs were not destined for Hong Kong, but Taiwan.

But Mr Justice Joseph Yau Chi-lap found the international element aggravated their crimes and increased their prison terms before awarding them a one-third discount for their timely pleas.

The men were Chen Yen-ting, 20, who did not disclose his occupation, university graduate Cheng Hsu-hung, 24, waiters Li Wei-chen, 20, and Weng Wei-siang, 18, plus Yang Ming-syuan, 21, unemployed.

Each man had pleaded guilty in April to one count of trafficking in dangerous drugs, an offence punishable by life imprisonment and a HK$5 million fine.
https://www.scmp.com/news/hong-kong/law ... lion-worth

That is one heck of a lotta ketamine. I thought that was like PCP, not really a fashionable drug anymore and only people like NJH and zmth still partook in that stuff.