Cocaine Cassie admits she knew she was smuggling drugs; wedding images released in tell-all interview

Cocaine Cassie has admitted she knew she was carrying drugs when she arrived at a Colombian airport – and it was not the first time.

Convicted drug smuggler Cocaine Cassie has admitted she knew she was carrying drugs when she arrived at a Colombian airport to fly home to Australia.

But it was not the first time she had acted as a drug courier.

In an exclusive interview with Channel 7’s Spotlight, Cassandra Sainsbury confessed to working as a drug courier around Sydney well before she made the fateful trip to Colombia five years ago.

In April 2017, Ms Sainsbury, then 22, was found guilty of smuggling 5.8kg of cocaine out of Colombia inside 18 headphone boxes in April 2017, and was sentenced to six years imprisonment in Colombia.

She was released early from Bogota Prison in 2020.

Ms Sainsbury has previously publicly claimed she was coerced into smuggling drugs, and she maintained this in the latest interview.

She admitted she knew what she was doing and knew what was going on, but “couldn’t do anything.”

“I’m not saying that I didn’t know. But I didn’t step into it one day and say, okay, today, I’m going to decide to go overseas and drug traffic,” she said.

Images of Cocaine Cassie Sainsbury at her beachside wedding at part of her tell-all interview with 7NEWS Spotlight. Picture: 7News

The former personal trainer and sex worker claims she was recruited to be a drug courier while working at a Sydney brothel.

She said the brothel madam had noticed how unhappy she was as a sex worker so put her in touch with a man called “Joshua” who was recruiting people to deliver “documents” around the CBD.

“I was very naive,” Ms Sainsbury said.

She said she would do deliveries for the man between two and 15 times a week earning $100 to $150 per delivery. She soon realised she was not delivering documents.

“It was drugs, cocaine,” she told journalist Ross Coulthart.

Cassie Sainsbury was emotional at times during the interview. Picture: Channel 7

Her boss upped the stakes and sent Ms Sainsbury and another woman on an overseas trip – she says she was told it was to deliver “documents” to England.

Instead she found herself in Los Angeles and then Bogota, Colombia, with no return ticket home.

Ms Sainsbury said she had been drugged and raped by her Bogota-based handler, known only as “Angelo”.

He packed her bag for her and followed her to the airport, she said.

By then she had suspected she would be carrying cocaine on the flight home.

“I’d never seen what was in the bag, it was all taped up but I knew what was in it,” she said.

“But I didn’t see a way out.”

Images of 'Cocaine' Cassie Sainsbury at her beachside wedding at part of her tell-all interview with 7NEWS Spotlight. Picture: 7News

She recalled being taken away by Colombian police to a room, where they unpacked her bag.

“I saw the headphones and I felt almost relieved, oh they’re headphones. Stupid little me didn’t think that in the middle of these packets of headphones there were rolls of cocaine,” Ms Sainsbury said.

Cassandra Sainsbury with the 5.8kg of cocaine found in her bag at Bogota Airport in 2017. Picture: EPA/Col Anti-narcotics Police / Handout

She revealed that life in prison had been desperate at times – she witnessed violence and had also tried to take her own life, before a cellmate intervened.

“It gets to the point where you don’t see the light at the end of the tunnel,” she said.

Ms Sainsbury arrived back home to Adelaide last month for the first time since her arrest and conviction, with her new wife, Colombian computer technician Tatiana, who she met after her release from prison.

Footage from their April wedding gave a glimpse into their beachside nuptials.

Cassie Sainsbury arriving at Adelaide Airport, with her wife Tatiana (left). Picture: Matt Loxton

Ms Sainsbury has reached out to her estranged father, who has been damning of her decision to smuggle drugs, but she is yet to receive a response.

And she revealed her dislike of her Cocaine Cassie moniker.

“I really do not like it. It’s probably one of the worst things. That’s not my name,” she said.

She claims she has changed a lot. She even speaks with a slight accent now and is fluent in Spanish.

“Having been so scared and gone through what I’d gone through is what made me realise that I can’t be scared, that I can stand up for myself. And I learnt to do it,” she said. “I’m not the scared little person that I was six years ago.”