She has made five trips to four different countries. She has conned immigration officials and foreign police, worked with four different syndicates and received more than R60 000 in cash.
And on three occasions she nearly got caught – but she believes luck was on her side.
Tina (whose real name is known to The Star) has been a successful drug trafficker since February.
The 44-year-old spoke to The Star after one South African drug mule, Janice Linden, was executed in China and another, Nolubabalo Nobanda, 23, was caught in Thailand on Monday.“I don’t think anyone can judge anyone until they are in a situation like this. It’s not easy. It’s very stressful. People must not think it’s easy,” said Tina on Wednesday.
Tina, who lives in the south of Joburg (Johannesburg), got into drug trafficking as an unemployed middle-aged woman with a criminal record.
“I became a desperate woman, desperate to feed my children. It’s not like I haven’t tried everything else, I have – but I have no other option.” She has two sons, aged 23 and two.
Tina was initially approached by a Ghanaian man who said she could go for a two-week holiday, or for longer. She would either take or bring back something: gold, diamonds or documents. He mentioned nothing of drugs.
Her first trip was to Brazil for two weeks.
She left home two days earlier than her flight, staying at a fully paid hotel in Pretoria, where she was injected for yellow fever.
“They take you to the airport. They drop you off. They tell you what to pack. I had to collect a suitcase in Brazil.”
In Brazil, a man gave her 30 clutch-bag purses to pack into her luggage.
“It is not quick, easy money. You are alone in a foreign country. You don’t know the language, you don’t know the country, you can’t interact with anyone when you are there. You stay in your hotel all the time. You only go out to get something to eat, and sometimes you meet the syndicate.”
When she checked in her luggage, she had to SMS the number on the luggage tag to the syndicate so they could collect it.
She received R20 000 cash when she returned to Joburg.
Later, she got her bag and it reeked of a dog repellent of sorts.
“When traffickers say they did not know what was on them, they are not lying, they do not know. You can do a lie-detector test on me. I do not know what I was carrying, I’ve never seen drugs. But I can assume it is.”
Two weeks after that trip, she flew to Brazil again. This time she was paid R25 000.
“I thought, ‘Oh God, here we go again’. But it’s good money.”
However, officials at customs in Brazil recognised her and declined her entry into the country. She came back on the same flight, with only the R10 000 she had been given for accommodation and food.It did not stop there.One month later, she left for Argentina. She brought a briefcase to SA on her return.
Although she had inspected the case, she found nothing untoward besides its unusual weight. Tina packed it into her luggage.“They booked me a direct flight to Argentina, but on return, I flew from Argentina to Chile to Madrid to Zurich to South Africa.”
Her trouble started in Madrid. She didn’t have the right visa, and immigration officials stopped her.“They held me for 24 hours, monitored every call, watched me through mirrored windows. They fine-combed my hand luggage, tore open the Mickey Mouse toy I had brought for my son.”
But they found nothing while Tina sat unperturbed in the room. “I just read a book and even had a sleep.”Hours later, when she arrived at OR Tambo, her luggage had disappeared. She made a claim for it. When it was found, it needed to be searched.However, Tina told the woman she was collecting it for someone else and did not have the key. She got away again.
Next, Tina went to Asia for three months, with the promise that she would earn R200 000.She spent a week in Nepal and five weeks in Bangladesh, where she got a visa to travel to Qatar and Argentina. The trip was unsuccessful. She left after five weeks not having earned any money.Her last trip was to Bali in September.“I was told it’s 99 percent safe. They gave me a bag to take over. I would spend 10 days in Bali.”But she was stopped by officials at Bali airport.
“I told them I wanted to see how the country had recovered from the tsunami years earlier. I was very lucky. They did not have space to check my luggage in the luggage station.”
Three days after she arrived, Tina received a call at 1am, telling her to meet another woman in the hotel. She was to give her the bag and take the woman’s.
While in Bangladesh, she was desperate to come home, so she swallowed four drug bullets. But she could not stomach them.
“They’re covered in sellotape. For two days I could not eat or talk. It took me four days to kak it out. But I watched a lot of South Africans come to this hotel and be given a bucket with bombs to swallow.”
Tina said she’d never thought she would be caught, as middle-aged white women who looked as if they could afford to travel were often targeted by the syndicates.
“I walk with God. I know it sounds stupid and I know what I’m doing is criminal, but I think God knows that my reasoning is logical.“It’s not to squander the money – it’s for a good cause.”She trusts the syndicate and thinks of them as “Christian” and “spiritual” people.“Anyone who does this knows they are doing something criminal, but they know there is no backing out. Not everyone will be brave enough to back out,” said Tina. - The Star
Post time 6-1-2017 05:47 PM
