Chinese one-time prostitute spills on disgraced mayor Paul Pisasale in bid to avoid deportation

A Chinese one-time prostitute is fighting from her prison cell to cast a more sympathetic light over the sordid tale that helped seal the fate of disgraced former Ipswich mayor Paul Pisasale.

A CHINESE one-time prostitute has revealed sensational details from inside the sordid world of disgraced former Ipswich mayor Paul Pisasale in her desperate bid to remain in Australia and become a child care worker.

Yutian Li, 40, has written to authorities telling how she was broke and desperate when a mystery man from Hong Kong offered her work as a masseuse, flew her from Melbourne to Brisbane and dropped her off at an inner-city apartment.

Inside was a man she later identified as the then-mayor, who expected to have sex with her.

“When I was at the apartment the Hong Kong man contacted me by (messaging app) Wechat and told me … if I did a good job I would get a lot of money. He said that Pisasale would pay $700 for two hours.

“I realised then that what I was expected to do was provide sexual services. I had never done that before, but in my desperate state I agreed.

“When Pisasale approached me I was frightened and stood away from him in the corner of the room. He expected to have intercourse with me and I began to cry.”

She said Pisasale then took her to a Chinese “hot pot” restaurant for dinner, where she poured her heart out about the “sad story” of her ex-boyfriend’s deceit.

They then went back to the apartment and had sex before Pisasale drove her back to the Hong Kong man’s house, she says.

Yutian Li was thrust into the spotlight as the “heart-broken” sex worker at the centre of a bizarre extortion scheme involving disgraced former Ipswich mayor Paul Pisasale. Picture: AAP/Glenn Hunt

The Sunday Mail can today reveal Li is now fighting from her prison cell to cast a more sympathetic light over the sordid and twisted tale that helped seal Pisasale’s downfall in a bid to overturn a Federal Government decision to kick her out.

Li was thrust into the spotlight this year as the “heart-broken” sex worker at the centre of a bizarre scheme in which the then-mayor posed as a private investigator to try shake down her Sydney taxi driver ex-boyfriend after he duped her into believing they would be married.

The Government last month cancelled Li’s bridging visa after it found she failed the character test due to her prison term being classed as a “substantial criminal record” under the Migration Act.

Li was sentenced in July to 15 months’ prison, suspended after seven months, over the extortion plot involving the then hugely popular “Mr Ipswich”, now 68, and his lawyer friend Cameron McKenzie.

Investigators had intercepted phone calls in which Pisasale posed first as telemarketer then as a PI to uncover that the Chinese ex-boyfriend was married and then to demand money from him for Li.

He demanded up to $10,000, telling Li’s ex-boyfriend that he “knows the Immigration Minister” and threatening a $200,000 “very public” lawsuit.

It came after Li asked him to “punish” the man after he promised to marry her, despite already being married, and then breaking up with her by claiming he was terminally ill, the court heard in July.

McKenzie followed up with a letter of demand, including private investigation costs.

Paul Pisasale admitted in court to receiving sexual favours from Li. Picture: AAP Image/Dave Hunt

Pisasale, who admitted in court receiving sexual services from Li, had argued he was trying to help her recover funds after she uprooted her life to be with her ex-boyfriend.

Li is now appealing her conviction and has written a 15-page letter to Immigration officials about the “series of unfortunate events” that took her from living a quiet existence to becoming a person of interest in a major corruption probe into Ipswich council.

“I hope anyone who reads (my story) will understand that I am really a good person although I will always have the reputation of being a criminal,” Li writes in pleading her case. “How easy it was for my good life to be ruined because of a series of unfortunate events.”

In her letter, obtained by The Sunday Mail, Li tells how she was “feeling lost and miserable” after being deceived by her ex-boyfriend and had no job or money when she moved to Melbourne to see her only Australian friend.

Her friend put her in touch with a “Hong Kong man in Brisbane who could arrange work for me,” she said.

The man had asked if she had experience as a masseuse and she replied that she had trained as a masseuse in Korea. She said the Hong Kong man collected her from the airport and took her to his house, saying he would arrange clients for her. The next day she said she was taken to meet her first and only client.

On the return trip, after having sex, Pisasale called up her ex-boyfriend on speakerphone, asking if he was married with children, to which the man replied “yes” and stating he was in good health.

“I then understood this and I realised (he) must have lied to me about his marriage and his health,” Li said.

Ipswich lawyer Cameron McKenzie was involved in the extortion plot. Picture: Darren England

In her Immigration letter, Li says she only had a basic level of English and had used a phone translator app to find the English word for “warn,” but it had suggested the word “punish”.

“I was still upset and I wanted (my ex-boyfriend) to know that what he was doing was wrong and hurt me badly,” she said.

Li tells how she was born into a middle-class family in China – the younger of two sisters to her engineer father and seamstress mother – and did well at school.

She studied computer science before marrying a much older Singaporean man after her father’s death, though her dreams of becoming a mother ended because he did not want children.

It was then, Li says, that she came to Australia as a tourist, spending time in Melbourne and Sydney. She met her ex-boyfriend when he picked her up in a taxi and she “gradually fell under his spell”.

He proposed in Bali, she said, but she later became doubtful after finding pictures of him and a woman naked.

Li has told Immigration officials she regrets the entire episode and hoped to finish her Australian studies before returning to China to see her family.

Pisasale, who was sentenced to two years’ jail, and McKenzie are also appealing their convictions.