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Infamous convicted drug smuggler ‘Cocaine’ Cassie Sainsbury has revealed she was indoctrinated into a Columbian cocaine ring through a Sydney brothel.
Sainsbury admitted for the first time she was part of an international drug operation that led to her sensational arrest during a tell-all interview on 7News Spotlight, aired Sunday night.
Sainsbury was caught with 5.8kg of cocaine hidden in 18 headphone boxes inside her suitcase as she boarded a flight to London from Bogota Airport, Colombia, in April 2017.
‘Cocaine’ Cassie Sainsbury said she was introduced to the drug smuggling underworld in a Sydney brothel
She claims she was introduced to the organised crime underworld through her Sydney brothel madame who noticed Sainsbury didn’t enjoy ‘entertaining’ clients.
‘She was a little bit sympathetic because, obviously, she realised there are people who like doing it and there are people who don’t,’ she said.
‘She said she had a friend that was often looking for workers to do deliveries into Sydney and that he was easy going, a good friend, reliable, trustworthy.
‘I felt that she was actually trying to help me.’
Sainsbury said her job was to go around Sydney and deliver ‘documents’ to high-profile companies in the city’s CBD.
However, she said she never suspected she was actually delivering cocaine, saying: ‘I was very naive’.
Sainsbury was caught with 5.8kg of cocaine hidden in 18 headphone boxes on a flight to London from Bogota in April 2017
‘When I arrived at the building the receptionist would the package off me and put it into a pigeonhole.’
‘One stood out to me, it was an orthodontist.’
Sainsbury said she would receive between $100 and $150 per delivery.
‘Confidential was the key word,’ she said.
Sainsbury would run anywhere from two to 15 jobs a week, which she now realises with hindsight were cocaine deliveries.
‘I didn’t realise how much was used until all of this,’ she said.
‘It’s such an eye opener, it’s huge.’
However, Sainsbury’s life took a dark turn when she was asked to pick up some documents in London alongside another worker.
‘We were told London, not Columbia,’ Sainsbury said.
Sainsbury said she had unknowingly run drugs around Sydney, believing the packages to be ‘documents’ before she was arrested in Columbia
‘Honestly, I look back now and I was such an idiot that I didn’t see it.
‘I really though I was going to retrieve documents.’
Her first sign that something wasn’t right was when she boarded her flight and realised she was heading to Bogota, Columbia’s capital, and not London.
‘I didn’t know where Bogota was, I had to look it up,’ Sainsbury said.
‘(I was told) everything was fine, that it was a minor hiccup and to do as I was told.’
Sainsbury said she had a sinking feeling about the trip and knew she had to get out, but didn’t know how.
‘I didn’t know how to get home,’ she said.
‘I’d been told I was being followed, that if I didn’t go through with it something would happen to me’.
But the threats weren’t enough to keep Sainsbury in place, determined to escape she visited a travel agent to book the cheapest flight home.
‘When I walked out (one of the drug ring members) was there,’ she said.
‘He took me to his apartment and gave me some water, because I’ve never been a big drinker, and I had no control of my body.’
Sainsbury said she was drugged, raped and kept prisoner for the remainder of her time in Columbia.
‘I think that’s what makes it worse,’ she said, ‘I knew what was going on but I couldn’t do anything.’
‘I wasn’t left alone…I was terrified.’
She claims it was the man who raped her that packed her bag for the flight to London.
Sainsbury said she knew she was carrying cocaine in her bag but had no escape because she was kept under constant watch and repeatedly threatened
‘I knew what was in it, I didn’t know another way out.’
Sainsbury described going through airport security, the relief when she checked in her bag and the horror when her name was called over a loudspeaker at the flight gates.
She said four police officers met her and took her to a private room where 18 headphones cases were laid out on a table.
At first she was relieved and thought there was a chance she was only smuggling electronics.
‘Stupid me didn’t think in the packets of headphones were rolls of cocaine,’ she said.
Sainsbury said she reported the connection between the Sydney brothel and the cocaine syndicate to the Australian Federal Police but they did not investigate it.
The AFP confirmed both Sainsbury’s submission and the lack of follow-up investigation to Seven.
Sainsbury said her hardships only continued after her arrest with her father calling for authorities to lock up his 22-year-old daughter for the longest time possible while she dealt with the direst conditions in one of Columbia’s harshest female prisons.
Cassie was sentenced to six years in prison but was released early in 2020.
She says her time in the jail will stay with her forever.