Inside the crime wave targeting innocent Aussie grandmothers
A global investigation has uncovered the devastating crime wave targeting and manipulating innocent Australian grandmothers into international drug mules.
The bombshell revelations are uncovered on 7NEWS Spotlight as journalists Michael Usher, Mylee Hogan and Denham Hitchcock go undercover in Brazil, Japan and Hong Kong to expose the cruel deception of online romance scammers.
It comes just days after a Brazilian judge cleared Veronica Watson, 59, of drug smuggling after she was found with 1.5kg of cocaine leaving Sao Paulo Airport last December.
The Queensland grandmother has always maintained her innocence and says she was scammed by a man posing as a love interest.
'I trusted him. He said he loved me,' she told Spotlight.
'I thought we were going to get married.'
In December, Perth grandmother Donna Nelson was sentenced to six years behind bars after smuggling 2kg of meth in a suitcase into Japan's Narita Airport in 2023.
The 59-year-old said she received the suitcase from a man she met on social media in 2020, and brought it from Laos to Tokyo as instructed. A sketch of Donna Nelson at her drug smuggling trial. Credit: 7NEWS / 7NEWS
The judges acknowledged Nelson was a victim of an online romance scam, but said she should been suspicious enough to not carry his suitcase.
Nelson's lawyer, Rie Nishida, said the verdict was a 'very unreasonable decision'.
'We need to talk with Donna but we will fight until the end, until she gets freedom,' she told reporters outside court last year.
'She's devastated but she's a strong woman so we will discuss and prepare for the next fight.'
Nelson's family have since confirmed they will be appealing the verdict.
'These online relationships were real, in both cases they went on for two and a half years (with) messages and video calls,' Hitchcock said.
'This is a new type of scam, insidious, evil and cruel.
'We're not just telling these women's stories; we're attempting to track down the people who destroyed their lives and show how it can happen to anyone.'
Love Mules airs on 7NEWS Spotlight on Sunday at 8pm on Seven and 7Plus.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
A new kind of drama is set to unfold with changed privacy laws
An Australian scandal is a like a sudden southerly on a clear summer's day – unexpected, jarring and liable to leave everyone shivering in its wake. From political pitfalls to celebrity slip-ups and the ever-rumbling corridors of Parliament House, we are a nation that guards privacy with one hand and refreshes newsfeeds with the other. Little wonder, then, that a show like Bridgerton – with its heaving corsets, whispered secrets and illicit entanglements – has a devoted fan base here. It's not just the drama that captivates us, but the tension between the private and the public, discretion and spectacle. While fans must wait until 2026 for the next episode, take heart 'dearest gentle reader': whispers among case-starved defamation lawyers suggest a new kind of drama is set to unfold. From Tuesday, a new statutory tort of privacy makes its debut on the Australian legal stage – and it's expected to dance to a familiar tune. Australians who suffer a serious invasion of privacy may claim up to $478,000 in damages and seek remedies including injunctions. As the age of unchecked intrusion draws to a genteel close, Lady Whistledown herself might remark that society's most prominent figures will breathe easier behind their velvet curtains. Or so they may think. As far back as 1960, US professor William Prosser identified four privacy torts: intrusion upon seclusion; public disclosure of private facts; false light portrayal; and appropriation of likeness. By 1977, all four were recorded in the US Restatement of Torts, a treatise issued by the American Law Institute. While not uniformly adopted there, intrusion and disclosure are well established – especially in celebrity-laden California. Britain took longer to get there. In 1991, two Sunday Sport photographers posed as doctors to snap a British actor in his hospital bed. The Court of Appeal famously declared: 'In English law, there is no right to privacy'. By 2000, however, the House of Lords changed course in Naomi Campbell v Mirror Group Newspapers. The action for 'misuse of private information' was born. By 2014, it was recognised as a tort, and today, privacy suits in London have become de rigueur. New Zealand recognised a general tort of privacy in 2004. By 2012 it recognised intrusion into seclusion as a standalone tort when a young woman was secretly filmed in the shower and awarded damages. That same year, Canada did likewise when a bank employee whose financial data had been improperly accessed received damages. Australia, by contrast, wasn't even at the races. It relied on defamation and breach of confidence – a patchy and much-criticised regime. This nearly changed a quarter-century ago in the Lenah Game Meats case. The chief justice urged better protection for privacy; the Australian Law Reform Commission echoed this in 2014. Lawyers even tried to open cracks left by the Lenah case, but these mostly faltered. In 2016, former High Court judge Michael Kirby said the inertia made Australia a ' laughing stock '.
Sydney Morning Herald
2 hours ago
- Sydney Morning Herald
A new kind of drama is set to unfold with changed privacy laws
An Australian scandal is a like a sudden southerly on a clear summer's day – unexpected, jarring and liable to leave everyone shivering in its wake. From political pitfalls to celebrity slip-ups and the ever-rumbling corridors of Parliament House, we are a nation that guards privacy with one hand and refreshes newsfeeds with the other. Little wonder, then, that a show like Bridgerton – with its heaving corsets, whispered secrets and illicit entanglements – has a devoted fan base here. It's not just the drama that captivates us, but the tension between the private and the public, discretion and spectacle. While fans must wait until 2026 for the next episode, take heart 'dearest gentle reader': whispers among case-starved defamation lawyers suggest a new kind of drama is set to unfold. From Tuesday, a new statutory tort of privacy makes its debut on the Australian legal stage – and it's expected to dance to a familiar tune. Australians who suffer a serious invasion of privacy may claim up to $478,000 in damages and seek remedies including injunctions. As the age of unchecked intrusion draws to a genteel close, Lady Whistledown herself might remark that society's most prominent figures will breathe easier behind their velvet curtains. Or so they may think. As far back as 1960, US professor William Prosser identified four privacy torts: intrusion upon seclusion; public disclosure of private facts; false light portrayal; and appropriation of likeness. By 1977, all four were recorded in the US Restatement of Torts, a treatise issued by the American Law Institute. While not uniformly adopted there, intrusion and disclosure are well established – especially in celebrity-laden California. Britain took longer to get there. In 1991, two Sunday Sport photographers posed as doctors to snap a British actor in his hospital bed. The Court of Appeal famously declared: 'In English law, there is no right to privacy'. By 2000, however, the House of Lords changed course in Naomi Campbell v Mirror Group Newspapers. The action for 'misuse of private information' was born. By 2014, it was recognised as a tort, and today, privacy suits in London have become de rigueur. New Zealand recognised a general tort of privacy in 2004. By 2012 it recognised intrusion into seclusion as a standalone tort when a young woman was secretly filmed in the shower and awarded damages. That same year, Canada did likewise when a bank employee whose financial data had been improperly accessed received damages. Australia, by contrast, wasn't even at the races. It relied on defamation and breach of confidence – a patchy and much-criticised regime. This nearly changed a quarter-century ago in the Lenah Game Meats case. The chief justice urged better protection for privacy; the Australian Law Reform Commission echoed this in 2014. Lawyers even tried to open cracks left by the Lenah case, but these mostly faltered. In 2016, former High Court judge Michael Kirby said the inertia made Australia a ' laughing stock '.
7NEWS
9 hours ago
- 7NEWS
Death of Courtney Anderson, who died falling from a ute on the Bruce Highway, to be re-examined at coronial inquest
Devastated by the loss of their daughter, Courtney Anderson's parents trusted authorities to investigate her untimely death properly. They were wrong. On April 1, 2024, Courtney died after exiting a vehicle travelling 80km/h on the Bruce Highway near Gladstone. Know the news with the 7NEWS app: Download today The 28-year-old was in the process of leaving her partner Ashley Campbell, who was driving. 'As soon as we knew he was in the car, alarm bells were ringing,' mum Lee-Ann Rasby said. 'You claim to love someone for 11 years, and you don't provide Courtney an ambulance, you just sit there watching and bleed out until it passes by help.' Still grief stricken from their loss, Courtney's mother Lee-Ann Rasby, father Don Anderson and stepmother Kristy Ibbotson provided as much background as possible on the couple's tumultuous relationship, including evidence Campbell allegedly smashed six of Courtney's phones. 'Within 48 hours, eight family members were simultaneously interviewed by the CIB (Queensland Police Criminal Investigation Bureau) outlining her domestic violence and our knowledge of her life was submitted to the Coroner,' Rasby said. 'And the Coroner did not acknowledge one word about any of it — nothing.' On 11 October, 2024, Central Coroner David O'Connell concluded Courtney took her own life. The trio have been fighting for the decision to be overturned ever since. That is, until this week, when Attorney-General Deb Frecklington announced she was ordering an inquest. 'What really struck me is how the family, how united they were and working together. So Lee-Ann and Don, and then Kristy, Courtney's step-mum ... came together for that meeting with me,' Frecklington said. 'They've worked together throughout this, and that really was able to showcase, to me, that, along with the history and the new information and what they were able to and how they were able to explain the circumstances of Courtney's life was able to persuade me to make to take this action.' Raised in Central Queensland, Courtney was only 14 when she first met Ashley Campbell, who was seven years her senior. He would become her first real boyfriend and they remained together for more than a decade. Courtney was packed to leave Campbell when he said they went for a drive to 'talk s**t out' after fighting all day. He told police on the scene they were arguing as they headed home just before dark to Gladstone in Courtney's gold Toyota Hilux. While driving, he hit a straight piece of road with grass on both sides when Courtney opened the door and jumped out without warning, the police report claims. They were travelling about 80km/hour. He travelled about 100m before stopping and then waved down cars for help. Rasby said police knocked on her door that night. 'And when I got there, there was two officers with torchlights because our outside lights went on. And I said, 'Oh my God, it's for me',' Rasby recalled. Six months after Courtney's death, Central Coroner David O'Connell determined there was 'no evidence to suggest' that Ashley Campbell 'forced her from the vehicle' in accordance with the police investigation. Campbell tested positive to both methylamphetamine and cannabis. While no drugs were detected in Courtney's urine, 0.01mg of methylamphetamine was found in her system. 'In the circumstances I find that Ms Anderson, whilst under the influence of methylamphetamine, an illicit drug, has whilst arguing with her partner opened the door of the vehicle and alighted from it,' O'Connell stated in his findings. 'It may be that she had undiagnosed mental health issues, perhaps relating to anger management issues, but she took no prescription medications to assist with that. 'It may be that the methylamphetamine in her system has affected her clarity of rational thinking and judgment at this time.' The family complained to O'Connell and called for a forensic, psychiatric evaluation. 'You are not qualified to make a statement about someone you have never met,' Rasby said. O'Connell dismissed their concerns saying they'd already been considered and his decision was in accordance with the Queensland Coroners Act 2003. Australian Femicide Watch founder Sherele Moody has been helping Courtney's family from the start. 'Her family has been shaking the tree from the day that they were told that it was a suicide,' Moody said. 'They have been pushing, pushing, pushing. There's a petition, her step-mum posts every day on social media about Courtney, you know, her family are speaking at rallies, they're trying to speak to politicians, they're doing everything possible to get a proper investigation.' 7NEWS picked up Courtney's case as part of the hit podcast The Truth About Amy. The cases of Courtney Anderson and Amy Wensley are disturbingly similar — both died while trying to leave their partners and both were written off as suicide. Attorney-General Deb Frecklington met with Courtney's family within a week of being contacted by 7NEWS' Truth About Amy producers. 'I've got an important role as Attorney-General and in government, we've come to government talking about the focus on victims. You know, we need to put victims first and foremost in our minds,' she said. 'And when we're talking about the increase of domestic violence, you know, it's a heinous crime, but it also is increasing all the time, and we're not stopping and sitting back and leaving the issue. 'We certainly will continue our focus on victims.' Courtney's family also has the support of former Attorney-General Shannon Fentiman, who met with them earlier this year. 'I really just thought she deserves this, and the family deserve answers,' she said. 'And where there is a sudden death and there has been a history of domestic violence or coercive control, we need to ask the hard questions. 'We don't want an investigation that doesn't reveal the full picture. We don't want a narrow investigation where the context of the relationship isn't properly investigated.' If you need help in a crisis, call Lifeline on 13 11 14.
