Cocaine smuggled in chocolate boxes
December 4th, 2009 | by admin |A GOLD Coast woman who was mailed 1.5 kilograms of cocaine in chocolate boxes from Costa Rica has been refused the chance to appeal her sentence.
In 2008, Simone Cianna Harris, of Palm Beach, pleaded guilty to attempting to present a marketable quantity of unlawfully purchased border control drugs.
She was sentenced to seven years’ jail, with a non-parole period fixed at four years.
The court heard in March 2007 that Customs staff in Sydney intercepted an Australia Post registered mail item that had been sent from Costa Rica and was addressed to a false name in Jefferson Lane, Palm Beach, Queensland.
An investigation of the package revealed it contained four boxes of confectionery and within each box were 14 or 15 chocolates.
Also in each box was a package of cocaine.
The court heard an analysis of the cocaine showed a purity of 74 per cent, with a total weight of 1,489.7 grams of cocaine.
Australian Federal Police then replaced the cocaine, worth $2 million in street value, with an inert substance and a listening device.
The court heard the listening device overheard Harris mention that she was receiving the package for a man whom she owed $19,000.
“This here is supposed to wipe out my bill,” the listening device heard her say.
Later that day she offloaded the cocaine to her debtor, who was also convicted in 2008.
Harris applied for leave to appeal against her sentence in the Court of Appeal, arguing it was manifestly excessive.
However in a written judgment released today, Justice Philip McMurdo dismissed the application.
“It was precisely that asked for by her counsel at sentence and was appropriately less than the sentence imposed on her co-offender,” he said.
“The application for leave to appeal against sentence must be refused.”
