Cassie Sainsbury’s lawyer says at first she didn’t like mystery man who allegedly gave her cocaine

CASSIE Sainsbury’s lawyer has shed new light on the mystery man who she claims tricked her into trying to smuggle drugs as he revealed she is wracked with regret.

Cassie Sainsbury and her fiancee Scotty Broadbridge. Picture: Facebook.

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EXCLUSIVE

CASSIE Sainsbury’s lawyer has shed new light on the mystery man who she claims tricked her into trying to smuggle drugs as he revealed she is wracked with regret.

Cassie, 22, from South Australia, is awaiting formal charges in El Buen Pastor women’s prison after being arrested trying to leave Colombia with about 6kg of cocaine on April 11.

Her lawyer Orlando Herran, who has visited her this week said: “She just keeps saying: ‘Stupid, I was so stupid’. Psychologically it is very hard for her.”

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Cassie Sainsbury was arrested trying to leave Colombia with about 6kg of cocaine on April 11. Picture: Colombia’s Anti-Narcotics Police.

Cassie was detained by police shortly before she cleared the final immigration gate to catch her flight home to Australia after a tip off from the US Drug Enforcement Agency.

Local media reported on Friday the DEA tipped off narcotics police just two days after Cassie arrived on April 3.

Mr Herran said Cassie had told him she didn’t like the Colombian man, known only as Angelo, when she first met him shortly after arriving in Bogata.

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Cassie Sainsbury' lawyer Orlando Herran. Picture: Channel 9

“She met him around the hotel where she was staying, in the first few days when she arrived here,” Herran says.

“She said that the first day she didn’t trust him, the second day a little bit more, the third day she trusted him, because he seemed very friendly.

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“She said this guy was very friendly, he spoke English and Spanish.

“He helped with everything, with translation, he showed her around.

She thought she had made a good friend.”

Hotelier Ingrid Hernandez, who recalls Cassie and her only visitor — the well dressed, dark skinned Angelo — said he had visited her several times during her stay in the $40 a night room 601.

“He came a few times, the receptionists told me, but we don’t have a record of him because he didn’t stay the night,” she says.

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Hotel manager Ingrid Hernandez. Joe Parkin Daniels.

“He was a young guy, but older than her. He looked normal. Normal height, normal build. He could have been in his late 20s, 30s. He had short brown gelled hair.”

Cassie has told family that after she was arrested she tried to contact Angelo but his phone was not connected.

Colombian organised crime expert Ariel Avila told News Corp Australia Cassie’s story of thinking she was carrying a bargain batch of headphones in her blue suitcase rather than 18 bags of cocaine, could well stack up.

“It could happen,” he says.

“In the middle of the partying you meet a guy or a girl, in this case a guy, you form a relationship fast, you have a few days being tourists in the capital, and then comes the recruitment.

“However the majority of the people know what they’re carrying. I’d say 90 per cent know what they’re carrying. Ten per cent might have been set up, but the vast majority know what they’re doing.”

Cassie’s lawyers have advised her she has a weak defence, given she admitted she packed the bag and can’t find Angelo, so should accept the charges in order for a shorter sentence than the eight to 20 years she faces.

Australian diplomats are working with their Colombian counterparts to try to iron out a deal that would see Cassie serve any sentence after she has been convicted at home in Australia.

Originally published as Cassie Sainsbury’s lawyer says at first she didn’t like mystery man who allegedly gave her cocaine