Australian police arrested a 47-year-old Canadian woman at Sydney airport after methamphetamine was found in bags of vegan protein powder
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A Canadian woman was arrested at Sydney airport in Australia, accused of smuggling methamphetamine disguised as vegan protein powder.
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The 47-year-old woman flew from Canada to Fiji and then on to Australia, landing at Sydney International Airport on Dec. 7, where her baggage was searched by Australian Border Force officers.
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An X-ray of two commercial product bags purporting to contain non-GMO fermented pea and organic brown rice proteins — natural chocolate flavour — revealed they contained large crystalline-shaped, semi-transparent substances.
Border guards opened the bags, saw the telltale off-white crystals and field-tested the contents positive for methamphetamine.
The bags weighed 2.5 kilos each.
The load and the woman were referred to officers with the Australian Federal Police (AFP), a national force similar to the RCMP, who charged her with importing a commercial quantity of a border controlled drug.
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Under Australia’s stiff laws on drug importation, she could face a life sentence if convicted, although that maximum seems unlikely given the relatively modest size of the load.
The woman was not identified by police but she is believed to be from British Columbia.
Det.-Supt. Morgen Blunden, AFP’s Sydney airport commander, said the risk of spending life in prison should outweigh the hope of financial gain from smuggling drugs into Australia.
He suggested it was linked to an organized crime group.
“There will be a significant increase of incoming passengers into Australia over the Christmas period, but this will not serve as an opportunity for organized criminal syndicates,” Blunden said.
Phillip Anderson, an Australian Border Force aviation traveller superintendent touted the ability of border guards to uncover such attempts at deception.
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“Our highly trained officers are alert to the different ways criminals try to conceal drugs, and have the expertise and technological capability to stop them,” Anderson said.
Canadians are a regular source of drug imports into Australia, where high demand and higher illegal drug prices than in most countries means higher profit if transnational smuggling is successful.
In August, Australian police said the country’s largest ever fentanyl seizure arrived from Vancouver inside military-style ammunition boxes hidden in an industrial lathe. There were 30 kilos of meth inside as well.
“Typically, we would only see fentanyl being detected in quantities of one gram or less. To have a detection that is 11 kilograms pure is just quite frankly extraordinary,” AFB commander James Watson said at the time.
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The same week, police announced that large loads of cocaine and meth, worth an estimated $135 million, were found hidden inside a vintage Bentley luxury sedan that was sent in a shipping container from Canada to Sydney.
Earlier this year, two Canadian gangsters from Vancouver were convicted in Australia for running a multi-million-dollar drug smuggling network. They received sentences of 17 years and 14 years in prison.
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Luxury ride: $140M in cocaine and meth shipped from Canada to Australia in vintage Bentley
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Australian police say country’s biggest fentanyl load came from Vancouver
Late last year, 140 kilograms of meth concealed inside an industrial dough-mixing machine shipped from Toronto to Melbourne was uncovered by Australian authorities.
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In 2020, loads of drugs were sent to Australia hidden inside snow globes, 200 barbecues, suitcases alongside a young child, and sewn into suitcase lining.
In 2019, Yaroslav Pastukhov, a music editor at Vice Media better known under the name Slava Pastuk, was convicted in Canada after recruiting young musicians, models, and former Vice interns to work as drug mules to smuggle coke on flights to Australia.
Four Canadians and an American recruited by Pastukhov were caught at Sydney airport with nearly 40 kilos of cocaine in their luggage and given lengthy prison sentences.
In 2018, two Canadian women were caught with suitcases full of cocaine on a cruise ship in Australia. Nicknamed the Cocaine Cowgirls, their trove of glamour photos shared on social media along their luxurious trip pushed the story into international headlines.
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