This story is for all people, to please take note and take care not to be used by the Nigerian drug lords for muling their drugs.
I was misused, as a fool, by trusting a friend who knew a Nigerian who could help me with a job. Due to the high unemployment rate in our country the Nigerian’s come with all these sweet stories of how they can help us earn some “legal” money. Be careful for they are recruiting people on our beach front in Durban, South Africa.
Be warned. Don’t lose your life for the drug lords who may use all kinds of tricks to make you carry their drugs from country to country.
Regardless of what the circumstances, once you are found to have drugs in your possession, you will be detained and remanded in custody usually indefinitely. Once this happens, you will have already lost your life and freedom. And if you were convicted, it may even be for life.
I am a 22-year-old from Ipoh, Malaysia. My father has always been the only breadwinner of our family, so we never had much money. When I was 13 years old, I started working without an education. In June 2017, I went to Kuala Lumpur to work because my salary had not been satisfactory.
In November that same year, a friend of mine told me there was a way to earn money quickly so I went to meet that person.
I am 25 years of age, married. I work at a Chinese restaurant. I am a junior chef responsible for frying food and dishes for customers. My wife is a housewife. My mother passed away when I was 12 and my father when I was 14. My mother died of a stroke due to high blood pressure, my father had a lung infection and died on Christmas Eve two years later. Some things were really a coincidence… in my family. I am the youngest in the family and was the most loved. Since childhood, our family condition was not good but I did not blame my past. I tried to support myself by working hard. Maybe there were too many bad friends around me.
Continue reading Looking for extra cash for the new year, Malaysian chef turns drug mule
Thank you Lord for bestowing me strength to continue running. From time to time I really do feel regret, “why did I take up this job?” Was it really worth the money?
I was born in Malaysia. This year I am 19 years old, when I disobeyed the law it was 8th of November 2017. At that time I brought 1535 grams of Ketamine to Hong Kong. I was scared and afraid, but I needed the money because my family was in a poor status. My dad was old and my mum passed away when I was barely 1-year-old.
Continue reading Jailed at 18 – young Malaysian in Hong Kong prison
Three Hongkongers were arrested for trying to smuggle 7kg of suspected cocaine into the city after being promised a free tour of the Maldives in return, police said on Tuesday.
Two men, aged 21 and 23, and a 21-year-old woman were intercepted at the airport’s customs clearance counter at about 9am on Monday after they collected their check-in luggage.
Senior Inspector Chan Mei-shi of the force’s Narcotics Bureau said 16 bags carrying the drugs were in secret compartments of the men’s suitcases. She said the consignment had an estimated street value of HK$8 million.
“We believe the men were hired by a drug trafficking syndicate and were responsible for bringing the haul into Hong Kong from the Maldives,” she said.
On Tuesday afternoon the two men were charged with drug trafficking and the woman was charged with conspiracy to traffic drugs. The trio was scheduled to appear at West Kowloon Court on Wednesday.
Chan said an initial investigation showed the three were recruited by a syndicate via a friend.
“They were offered free return tickets to the Maldives together with free accommodation and food,” she said, adding the trio were paid from HK$10,000 to HK$50,000 each as a reward and provided with a tour of the archipelago nation.
With the approach of Christmas and the new year, Chan appealed to youngsters not to fall for criminal get-rich-quick schemes.
“Criminals will offer youngsters huge rewards to lure them into bringing illegal drugs into or out of Hong Kong,” Chan said.
Hong Kong customs officers said they smashed a transnational drug smuggling syndicate on Monday, seizing a HK$30 million stash of cocaine and making three arrests.
The latest operation was the third large cocaine raid mounted by customs this year and the authorities admitted smuggling of the drug was a serious problem.
In the first six months of 2018, police and customs officers seized a total of 355kg of cocaine – almost double the 180kg haul in the same period last year.
The trio will appear at West Kowloon Magistrates’ Courts on Thursday morning charged with trafficking in a dangerous drug and manufacturing of a dangerous drug.
The 26kg of suspected cocaine in 36 packs was found hidden in the door rims of a 20-foot container which arrived at Kwai Chung Customhouse Cargo Examination Compound from Colombia on August 22.
Chan Tsz-tat, head of customs’ ports and maritime command, said the shipping document declared the container held 1.4 tonnes of wooden baffles worth about US$2,800.
Suspicious of the origins, weight, and value of the declared items, officers examined the container by X-ray and found the colour around the rims of the doors was deeper.
“The items inside the container were just empty wooden boxes of poor quality instead of wooden baffles,” Chan said on Wednesday. “When officers knocked on the doors, the sound was different. The rims were completely sealed and we were not able to find anything. We passed the case to the customs drug investigation bureau for further investigation.”
Customs tailed the container to a metal shack in Yuen Long where they arrested the 32-year-old driver, a 52-year-old South American man, and another 32-year-old local man.
Li Dandan pulled her mother in a tight embrace as soon as she emerged from a Hong Kong court’s cell holding unit, free at last from a drug trafficking case hanging over her head for nearly three years.
Beside them stood prison chaplain Father John Wotherspoon, who had waited anxiously for Li’s release, having spent the past two years helping the Guangzhou native prove her innocence.
“I’m very happy,” he said tearfully after learning of Li’s acquittal. “I’m hoping her case can help the [other drug mules] appeal.”
Wotherspoon since 2013 has been working on a “name and shame” project, identifying and exposing drug lords operating through and in the city. His efforts came as he travelled the world to help drug mules facing trial.
The Roman Catholic priest claimed about 20 mainland women had fallen victim to African drug lords over the past decade – and Li was one of them.
On November 7, 2015, Li was intercepted at Hong Kong International Airport while en route to Malaysia to help deliver clothing samples for her Nigerian boyfriend, IK, who said he would set up business in her home province of Guangdong.
In a backpack she carried were 1,983 grams of crystalline solids stored in a hidden compartment sewn into its linings.
Hong Kong prosecutors said the single mother, now 33, had trafficked 1,934 grams of methamphetamine, a drug more commonly known as Ice, worth HK$580,000.
But Li told a different story: of a love scam in which she was conned into making deliveries for a man she trusted.
“I dated this Nigerian man because he did not smoke or drink. He struck me as a hardworking person,” she wrote in a letter to Wotherspoon in July 2016. “I could not believe he was a drug trafficker.”
She thought he was a real boyfriend.
Wotherspoon said Li was highly vulnerable in light of her divorce.
I’m Walter Casas* from Argentina, and I’m detained at Lai Chi Kok (Hong Kong) for drug trafficking.
The job market in my country is very difficult and after I looked and looked for a job I could not find any. I couldn’t afford to pay for my studies in Psychology, I needed money.
Hong Kong’s young adults have been told age and a clean record will not save them from a lengthy jail sentence if they are caught smuggling drugs or other contraband into the city.
The warning came from Ida Ng Kit-ching, the head of the Rail and Ferry Command at Customs & Excise Department, as she revealed 92 young offenders had been arrested in the first five months of this year, a rise of 46 percent on 2017.
Ng said the case of a 20-year-old, who was sentenced to 22½ years in prison for trafficking 5kg of ketamine, should prove a salutary lesson for others tempted to follow in his footsteps – especially as he was paid just HK$500 to do so.
Seven months after having been sentenced I have decided to write again some of the things that I think are unknown to some, as I am the one that is here. A 31 year old Venezuelan single mother, arrested in September 2016 at the Hong Kong international airport. Exactly one year and six months I have decided to face the hard reality that awaited me.
It’s been almost one year since my arrest and detention on trafficking charges of 1 kilo of high purity cocaine.
As everybody knows, I was not the owner of that drug. I was recruited as a courier to carry it overseas with the promise of a monetary reward for a better life for my family. Although it is not an excuse, everybody also knows that we agree to break the law just for our family.
I am Brazilian, and this is my sad story.
Due to my financial situation and the huge responsibility on my shoulders (five children and four wives) I was approached by a man. He introduced me to several others, and they told me many things like they were selling a vacation package. They assured me that the risks were very low and promised that even if caught the punishment was small.
Low-level drug mules are convicted at a rate of more than one a day in Hong Kong’s High Court while only one gang organiser or senior syndicate member is sentenced every eight months, a study provided to Post Magazine shows.
An analysis by former deputy director of public prosecutions John Reading SC found that of 1,619 traffickers convicted from 2012 to 2015, only six were organisers or senior gang members, while 1,519 (or 93 percent) were couriers, apprehended either in Hong Kong or while trying to enter or leave the city. The remaining 94 cases mostly involved so-called storekeepers caught with drugs in Hong Kong.
Reading’s study also found that sentences for drug-trafficking offences were more severe in Hong Kong than in the 17 other jurisdictions surveyed, with a 22-year starting point for trafficking offences involving 1kg of a class-A drug compared with 20 years in Turkey, 15 to 20 years in Slovakia and 10 to 17 years in New York.
Hong Kong was the only jurisdiction surveyed, apart from Iceland and Austria, not to consider the role and seniority of the offender in the sentencing process. Hong Kong was also one of only six jurisdictions where previous good character was not recognised as a mitigating factor.
The average sentence over the four-year period in Hong Kong was nine years and nine months, while the highest sentences given out were to a 37-year-old sentenced to 32 years for trafficking 33.6kg of cocaine, and a 45-year-old sentenced to 33 years and six months for trafficking 11.9kg of cocaine and 410 grams of crystal methamphetamine.
Because 16-year-olds are tried in adult courts in Hong Kong, prosecutions over that period included 82 minors. All but two received substantial jail terms and cases included a 16-year-old sentenced to 17 years for trafficking 1.9kg of ketamine.
“The heavy sentences imposed for the offence in Hong Kong have not resulted in a significant reduction in drug trafficking cases over those years,” Reading concluded.
A 52-year-old woman from Peru arrested at Hong Kong International Airport on Saturday was carrying 2.5 kilograms of suspected cocaine in her body.
The woman arrived in Hong Kong via The Netherlands but was arrested during customs clearance after officials became suspicious because the woman walked slowly and awkwardly, Sing Tao Daily reported.
The woman ejected packets of suspected cocaine from her body during a check. The officers immediately sent her to North Lantau Hospital, where she discharged a total of 180 condoms with suspected liquid cocaine over two days.
The seized cocaine weighed about 2.5 kilograms in total and had an estimated street value of HK$2.3 million (US$294,462).
Officers said it was the biggest case of ingested drug trafficking caught by customs this year.
