Alleged Mexican drug smuggler Rosie Thomas living in luxurious $4.5m pad while she awaits trials
A YOUNG Sydney woman charged with smuggling a huge haul of amphetamines from Mexico is the daughter of a multi-millionaire businesswoman and has swapped her share house for her mother’s $4.5 million mansion while she awaits trial.
NSW
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A YOUNG Sydney woman charged with smuggling a huge haul of amphetamines from Mexico is the daughter of a multi-millionaire businesswoman and has swapped her grungy inner-west share house for her mother’s $4.5 million mansion while she awaits trial.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal while on bail Rosie Thomas is living in luxury in a Bondi home that is part of her mother’s property portfolio — as the 25-year-old’s Mexican girlfriend languishes in custody in Silverwater prison.
Thomas and her partner, Norma Zuniga Frias, were arrested on March 1 after police foiled an alleged plot to import 20kg of methamphetamines worth $21 million from Mexico concealed in stereo speakers.
Zuniga Frias, also 25, was charged with importing a commercial quantity of ice. Thomas was charged with attempting to possess a commercial volume of the drug.
They each face life in prison if convicted. Neither woman has entered a plea.
Thomas was granted bail on March 23 under conditions including that she live with her mother, Jackie Maxted, that she not leave the house without her mother or someone her mother deems suitable, and that she report to police every day.
Frias has been remanded in custody.
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Ms Maxted is an online publisher and entrepreneur with a property portfolio worth nearly $10 million, including the Bondi house, which boasts a pool, Miele kitchen and “designer bedrooms”. Ms Maxted paid $100,000 as security for her daughter’s bail.
Documents lodged with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission show Ms Maxted sold one of her three beauty-themed websites, Beauty Haven, to Bauer Media in 2015 for more than $20 million.
That year, she bought a two-storey, three-bedroom penthouse in the New York-style Griffiths Teas development in Surry Hills for $4 million, as well as the Wellington St, Bondi, home.
It is a far cry from the modest Marrickville share house the Ms Thomas and her lover lived in before their arrest.
Three months before police swooped on her daughter, Ms Maxted posted a photograph of Thomas, Frias, herself and her three other children, telling a friend on Facebook: “I suppose they’ve all changed quite a lot since we last saw you.”
Ms Maxted, 56, has featured in several articles online about female entrepreneurs, including a 2016 interview with Mediascope in which she joked about not supervising her kids enough. “While growing up, the children have definitely suffered from a lack of ‘domestic management’ shall we say?” she said.
“This means that our kids were often the ones with the wrong clothes, missing homework, lost library books and unsigned notes! Having said that, I’m hoping that, on the plus side, they learned a degree of resourcefulness and independence.”
Thomas is due to appear in court on May 9.