Peru Two's Michaella McCollum ‘couldn't survive prison horrors' Brit ‘smugglers' Bella Culley & Charlotte Lee may face
The infamous drug smuggler turned influencer branded the pair "victims", and said she could not endure the conditions Culley and Lee may have to face.
14
14
14
As one half of the notorious Peru Two, McCollum, 31, served three years in a hardcore prison near Lima when she was convicted of drug smuggling in 2013.
Alongside Melissa Reid, the two were arrested at Jorge Chavez International Airport in Lima, Peru, after it was discovered that their suitcases contained a shocking £1.5million of cocaine between them.
Mule turned author McCollum also detailed how she was forced to survive on maggot-infested paella and flick away cockroaches approaching her on the dining tables.
The now mum-of-two said of Culley and Lee: "I could not do 20 years in a prison like that. I just couldn't. And that's what those girls are facing."
Culley, 18, and Lee, 21, are facing similar but unrelated drug smuggling charges and have both been locked up far away from home with little hope of getting out.
Culley was arrested on May 11 in Tbilisi airport, Georgia, with a suitcase packed with 31lb of cannabis and hashish after flying from Thailand via Sharjah in the UAE.
She faces 15 years to life in jail in the eastern European former Soviet state.
She is being held in watchtower-ringed Penitentiary No 5 near Tbilisi while prosecutors probe how she came to have the £200,000 stash and who she planned to hand it to.
Meanwhile, Lee was arrested earlier this month in Sri Lanka after cops found two suitcases stuffed with 46kg of synthetic drug kush — which is 25 times more potent than opioid fentanyl.
If found guilty, the South Londoner could face a 25-year sentence.
The Brit claimed that she didn't know she was smuggling drugs into Sri Lanka before she was detained - and called her allegations 'made up'.
Her friends revealed that she has been struggling behind bars since her arrest due to the shocking conditions.
The part-time nail technician told pals she has not been allowed medication, and detailed how her cleaning regime consists of 'having a glass of water poured over her head'.
McCollum, who has endured similar hardship in foreign prisons, was also a very young adult when she made the "greatest mistake of my life".
She was 19 at the time of her arrest, alongside her pal who she had recently met Reid, who was 20.
The mum compared her story to those of Lee and Culley.
She said: "The situation was almost exactly the same. Her mum had reported her missing, then it emerged that she'd been arrested.
"There were such parallels with my case – except it was just in a different country."
14
14
14
She added: "I couldn't help but feel bad for them.
"They are 19 and 21. Whatever they have done, it's so young to be caught up in something like this, and I know what they are going to go through.
"And their families. It's the worst thing anybody can have to face."
Culley's situation also took a nightmare twist, after she told a Tbilisi court that she was pregnant.
McCollum said: "As a mum, I can't even begin to imagine what it would be like to give birth in that sort of place, and to potentially have the child taken from you and put into care.
How might the cases of Bella Culley and Charlotte May be connected?
Within a single day of Bella Culley's arrest, Charlotte May, 21, was arrested in Sri Lanka after allegedly being caught trying to smuggle drugs worth £1.2m
While the two arrests took place over 3,000 miles apart, people immediately noted striking similarities
It is believed to be likely that Georgian and Sri Lankan authorities will launch a joint investigation
Both women are said to have departed from the same airport - Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi airport - allegedly with the drugs on them
In both cases, the drugs were stashed in airtight packages that suggest a level of professionalism
Both women had told their loved ones that they planned on meeting a mystery man during their travels in Thailand: Bella's grandad said she mentioned a man called "Ross or Russ", while Charlotte's friends said she made vague comments about meeting a man
"That adds a whole new, terrifying, dimension. It's just incredibly sad."
The smuggler turned public speaker also said the accused pair need more public sympathy, but cautioned that she also understands they may have made mistakes, as she did.
"It's easy to look at girls like this and think 'how could you be so stupid?' but I look back at myself and think exactly that," she said.
"I don't know the circumstances in detail here, but I do know that of all the women I came across who had been involved in drug smuggling, only about 10 per cent were doing it as a business, who knew the risks and accepted them."
She continued: "The vast majority were the victims of some sort of coercion, usually by men.
14
14
14
14
"Prisons all over the world are full of women who have been caught up in something like this."
Lee has already told cops about a mysterious Brit man called "Dan".
She claims to have met him on a beach in Thailand before he bought her a ticket to Colombo, promised to join her but then suddenly vanished.
McCollum said she was only regarded as a "victim" after a 2022 Netflix documentary exploring the Peru Two case.
She said: "It was when I was watching an actress do some of the re-enactments of my story that I realised there had been exploitation and coercion going on here.
"At the time I was so high (on cocaine) that I could barely walk. Yet the men around me were all sober.
"I thought they were my friends, but actually they didn't give a s**t about me."
McCollum was offered a mere £5,000 to smuggle the drugs she was caught with.
"I mean who would risk spending 20 years of your life in prison for £3,000 or £4,000 or even £10,000," she reflected.
"Even £50,000 isn't enough. No amount of money is worth your freedom."
The 31-year-old has also written a book detailing her experience, and worked with police to tell her story to impressionable teens.
More than a decade on from her harrowing story, the former drug mule is now a public speaker, wife and author who's estimated net worth nearly £1million.
14
14
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Daily Mail
an hour ago
- Daily Mail
Marjorie Taylor Greene threatens dramatic breakup with Trump over a core base frustration that could upend entire Republican Party
Six months into Donald Trump 's return to the White House Marjorie Taylor Greene has about had it with the Republican Party. The conservative firebrand who surged onto the political scene in 2021 and has been an ever-present figure in the House GOP and MAGA orbit ever since told the Daily Mail in a 45-minute call this week that it may be time for her to walk away. 'I don't know if the Republican Party is leaving me, or if I'm kind of not relating to Republican Party as much anymore,' she revealed. 'I don't know which one it is.' Her fidelity to the president is still strong, she insists, but she sees flashing red lights warning that the GOP is out of step with the MAGA base. It's the audience she feels most in-tune with, considering her seven million social media followers. 'I think the Republican Party has turned its back on America First and the workers and just regular Americans,' she said. MTG senses that the GOP is reverting to its 'neocon' past, and its leaders, the 'good ole boys,' are a formidable opponent for the true MAGA agenda. 'I'm not afraid of Mike Johnson at all,' she said candidly. When it comes to women in the Republican party, Greene occupies a unique space. She has the largest social media following of any Republican woman, boasting close to 7.5 million followers on X alone. Donald Trump stands with Marjorie Taylor Greene as he prepares to leave Columbus Airport, Columbus, Georgia, Saturday June 10th 2023. Greene often touts her close ties to Trump The 51-year-old lawmaker wants to stop foreign aid, continue to use DOGE to shave down government expenditures and waste, stop adding to the national debt and be on the look out for inflation. 'Like what happened all those issues? You know that I don't know what the hell happened with the Republican Party. I really don't.' 'But I'll tell you one thing, the course that it's on, I don't want to have anything to do with it, and I, I just don't care anymore,' she said sounding frustrated. She has told the Daily Mail she senses the Georgia GOP is not adequately reading the voters in the state. MTG said she's happy to not be on the ticket for the upcoming Senate race. 'Georgia is very much controlled,' she explained. 'I call it the good ole boys network. It's the donors of the state, they're good hearted people, but they are very low risk takers, so they end up always being talked into ... really very weak moderate candidates.' 'It's a very lukewarm, not exciting Republican ballot, you're just not going to get the turnout there that's needed, especially when we came off the last election and only won the state by 115,000 votes.' Without Trump on the ballot in the upcoming 2026 Senate race, the GOP could struggle to overcome Democrat Sen. Jon Ossoff, she said. Most polling of the race shows the Democrat with a double-digit lead, even in a potential match up against Greene. She's used this large platform to publicly split with her party and call Israel's actions in Gaza a 'genocide.' MTG has also used it to condemn U.S. involvement in conflicts abroad and question where the Jeffrey Epstein files are and why they aren't public yet. Republican women, she says, have a finger on the pulse of the party that the 'good ole boys' in the party don't. 'I think there's other women in our party that are really sick and tired of the way men treat Republican women,' she said. 'I think there's other women - Republican women - and I'm just giving my opinion here, who are really sick and tired of them,' she continued. 'And the one that really got shafted was Elise Stefanik.' Stefanik was originally nominated by Trump to serve as ambassador to the United Nations but her bid was later rescinded by the White House. It's thought that her nomination was pulled due to the narrow majority in the House of Representatives. 'I mean, she got screwed by Mike Johnson, and she got screwed by the White House. I'm not blaming Trump, particularly. I'm blaming the people in the White House.' Mike Waltz, a former congressman from Florida who briefly served as national security advisor before losing his job after including a journalist in a Signal group chat, was later reassigned to fill the UN ambassador post. 'How does he get awarded after 'Signalgate?'' Greene wondered. 'Isn't that weird ... who awarded him that?' Greene has recently put forward a slew of legislation that focuses on areas not typically touched by the GOP. In recent months she's introduced bills to prevent cloud-seeding and releasing chemicals in the sky, make English the official language of the U.S. and to cut capital gains taxes on homes - a move she hopes will help make houses more affordable. Greene told the Daily Mail that she doesn't find herself with close GOP allies, particularly woman, that are championing causes she's most interested in. 'I'm going alone right now on the issues that I'm speaking about,' she admitted. Greene has not faced a serious political threat since getting elected to Congress. She regularly clears her primary contests by double digits and runs away with the general election. The last election she dominated winning with 64 percent of the total vote. Still, her statewide polling is shaky. Greene would get trounced in a theoretical head to head matchup against incumbent Democrat Sen. Ossoff, polling shows. An Atlanta Journal-Constitution poll from earlier this year showed Greene losing to Ossoff by 17 points, hardly good news. Greene reaffirmed to the Daily Mail she's staying out of the Senate race. 'I had to beat eight men and had to really whoop one in the primary, and I did, and the primary is everything in my district, and I did that by myself. I didn't do that with anybody's help, not President Trump, Mike Johnson,' she told the Daily Mail.
Reuters
4 hours ago
- Reuters
Jordan says two armed people killed after 'infiltration attempt' via Syrian border
Aug 2 (Reuters) - Jordan's armed forces said on Saturday that its forces killed two armed people after a 'foiled infiltration attempt' through its border with Syria the previous day. The Jordanian Armed Forces did not provide further details in its statement but said that the rest of the armed group were pushed back to the Syrian territory. Jordan's armed forces often report foiling border infiltration attempts, sometimes for drug smuggling. In January, Jordan and Syria agreed to form a joint security committee to secure their border, combat arms and drug smuggling and work to prevent the resurgence of Islamic State militants.
The Guardian
4 hours ago
- The Guardian
How a high-speed ocean chase led to an £18m cocaine seizure in Cornwall
To the surfers and dog walkers on the Cornish beach it must have looked like a scene from a crime thriller. An ocean chase ending with two boats crunching aground on the sand, a stumbling attempt by three men to escape into the dunes, dramatic arrests and the discovery of millions of pounds of cocaine. For the investigators it was the start of a painstaking investigation that has shone a unique light into a tactic used by South American drug gangs and British organised crime groups known as at-sea drop-offs or Asdos, in which bales of cocaine fitted with GPS trackers are dumped at sea from a transatlantic 'mother' ships to be picked up by small vessels and smuggled into the UK via quiet coves and harbours. What made Operation Libellary particularly satisfying for the investigators is that they caught people involved in a number of different aspects of the crime – including a Hampshire fisher fallen on hard times who was recruited for his seafaring ability, a Colombian enforcer there to make sure the pickup went smoothly, and members of an 'Essex crime group' believed to be part of the gang that had bought the consignment and would have sold it on the streets of south-east England. Barry Vinall of the National Crime Agency (NCA), who was the senior investigating officer, said the seven men caught and convicted of conspiracy to import class A drugs were pivotal figures. 'You've got organisers, logistics, security, customers,' he said. It began with a lucky break for the law enforcement agencies. The UK Border Force cutter HMC Valiant was patrolling off the coast of Cornwall on 13 September last year when officers noticed a rigid-hulled inflatable boat (RHIB) on the horizon. They knew there was a 'mother ship' in the area so went to take a look and the RHIB sped off. For 28 miles the three men in the RHIB stayed ahead of the Border Force boat, tipping overboard packages of what turned out to be cocaine. The chase ended on Gwynver beach near Land's End, when the three – Peter Williams, 44, Scott Johnston, 38, and Edwin Yahir Tabora Baca, 33 – were arrested. A Garmin chart plotter and knives were found. The men had ditched 11 bales of cocaine into the water. Border Force officials recovered six of them, worth about £18m. A team of NCA officers was dispatched from London to Cornwall. 'We deployed fast time,' said Vinall. 'It was all hands to the pump. We needed to gather as much information of what they'd been up to and who they were.' They found out that Williams was a fisher by trade. He is a familiar figure at Emsworth harbour in Hampshire, where he ran a fishing outfit and fishmonger's called Fresh from the Boat. It supplied hotels, pubs and hotels and sold fish from its own shop, winning a number of small business awards. But Williams had endured a torrid few years. In February 2022, his boat, Tia Maria, was wrecked in Storm Eunice. 'We are feeling pretty broken and it's hard to keep it all together,' Fresh from the Boat wrote on its website. Local people rallied and organised a crowd-funder to help Williams buy a new boat, Brenda C, but he also had to put his own money into the business and the financial pressure was taking a toll. NCA officers examined CCTV from the harbour showing that over the months there had been a number of suspicious-looking meetings between Williams and others. 'That started us looking at a wider network that was involved,' said Vinall. Tabora Baca is from Barcelona and initially came up with an unlikely story, saying he was a tourist who had accepted an invitation from two strangers to go fishing. His phone told a different tale. Officers found messages from his boss telling him he would be going to sea with Williams and Johnston, another Hampshire man, to scoop up packages of cocaine dropped by a ship. Vinall said: 'These ships come through and dump a load and then multiple organised crime groups come out a bit like the seagulls following the fishing trawlers, to collect the drugs.' Tabora Baca was believed to be acting as security, perhaps for a cartel, to make sure each customer took the share they were due. Sign up to First Edition Our morning email breaks down the key stories of the day, telling you what's happening and why it matters after newsletter promotion The NCA also began to focus on three Essex men with a hired white van who were heading to Cornwall as the RHIB was speeding out to pick up the drugs – Bobbie Pearce, 29, Michael May, 47, and Terry Willis, 44. The NCA believes these men were there to take the cocaine back to the east of England to be sold on the streets of Essex and London. After the RHIB was spotted and the chase began, Johnston phoned Willis from the boat, presumably telling him it had all gone wrong, before dumping his phone in the sea. The three Essex men immediately left the area in a white van and a BMW. Another vital clue was a sticker on the RHIB from a marine company in north Wales. The NCA contacted the company and found it had been bought by Alex Fowlie, 35, from West Sussex, for £70,000 a few months earlier. He is the seventh man involved and seen as a key facilitator. Fowlie was so confident that he would not be found that while the Asdo was in progress, he was enjoying a mini-break with his partner close by – in the north Cornwall surfing town of Newquay. 'It was a strange place to go when there's a drug importation coming in,' said Vinall. 'But he was there posting pictures all over Facebook.' Losing some product and some smugglers is an occupational hazard. Three days after the Gwynver Beach chase – at which point he thought he was in the clear – Fowlie was arranging another Asdo pickup. 'We're good to get a team ready,' he told an accomplice in a message the NCA found. 'We just need the fisherman and one of us go out with him and they send one of their lads to keep an eye on things. 'You've got your radars. If you see anything coming towards you, just drop it back in. It's got its GPS and then we come out with the RHIBs and grab it after. It's zero fucking risk.' Not quite. Tabora Baca, Johnston, Willis and May were given hefty sentences for conspiracy to import class A drugs on Friday 1 August. The rest are being sentenced for the same offence on Thursday 21 August.
