Love scam drug mule grandma let off
MALAYSIA: An Australian grandmother who was the victim of an online romance scam has been acquitted of drug charges in Malaysia.
Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto, 54, would have faced execution if found guilty in Malaysia’s High Court yesterday, despite lawmakers in Kuala Lumpur voting only weeks ago to give judges discretionary powers in individual cases. The new law has not yet been formally gazetted.
Prosecutors told Exposto’s lawyers they had decided to appeal the acquittal, meaning she will not be allowed to immediately return to Australia.
Exposto insisted she was duped into flying into Kuala Lumpur’s international airport from Shanghai in December 2014 with 1.5 kilograms of methamphetamine in her luggage.
Defence lawyers say the mother of four from Cabramatta, in Sydney, was the victim of a sophisticated United States military romance scam that has entrapped thousands of people.
Exposto told the High Court in September that she fell for the scam after building an online relationship with a supposed US soldier and Afghanistan War veteran named ‘‘Captain Daniel Smith’’, who asked her to marry him in 2013. She said her relationship with her husband was ‘‘getting a bit sour’’ at the time.
‘‘[Smith] made me feel loved, he made me feel wanted,’’ she said.
Exposto said she was lured into carrying a bag from Shanghai to Melbourne, transiting in Kuala Lumpur. She believed it contained only clothing owned by a supposed acquaintance of the soldier. She was arrested after she volunteered to put the bag through customs screening. The drugs were sewn into a hidden compartment.
A judge found that Exposto had no knowledge of the drugs in the bag, rejecting a prosecution submission that her story about the love scam was an afterthought.
The US military has described the love scams as a ‘‘growing epidemic’’.
Defence lawyers said Exposto, a former social worker in East Timor, had never wavered in her account of the scam.
Leaving the court, Exposto’s son, Hugo, said: ‘‘I am very happy.’’ – Fairfax