Ex-porn star Isabelle Lagace jailed over cocaine smuggling
AN around the world cruise paid for by shadowy drug traffickers was meant to be an “easy job with easy money” for a former Canadian porn actress but it has ended in four and a half years in a NSW jail.
NSW
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AN around the world cruise paid for by shadowy drug traffickers was meant to be an “easy job with easy money” for a former Canadian porn actress but it has ended in four and a half years in a NSW jail.
Isabelle Lagace, 29, plucked a tissue from a box and dabbed her eyes as District Court Judge Kate Traill on Friday sentenced her to seven and a half years with four and a half years non-parole for smuggling up to $21 million worth of cocaine into Sydney aboard the cruise ship Sea Princess.
Her sister wrote in a letter previously tendered in court that Lagace was convinced the 51-day cruise from the UK to Latin America and Australia would be an, “an easy job for easy money.”
But Lagace wrote in her own statement to the court that it has ended with the stark reality that, “the defining years of my womanhood will be spent in a prison half way around the world.”
Judge Traill noted in her sentencing remarks that Lagace said she agreed to smuggle the drugs to repay a $20,000 loan provided to her by someone connected to the restaurant/bar where she worked in Montreal.
Lagace, originally from Quebec, did not pay for her flights from Canada to the United Kingdom or for the around the world cruise which stopped in Ireland, USA, Bermuda, Columbia, Ecuador and Chile before arriving in Sydney on August 28 last year.
Judge Traill said Lagace met a number of people on the cruise including her cabin mate Melina Roberge, 23, and another man Andre Tamine, 63.
As Lagace and Roberge cruised the Atlantic, Carribean and South Pacific they regularly updated their social media accounts with bikini-clad photos of themselves enjoying their glamorous holiday.
The court heard that as the cruise ship approached Sydney, Lagace was asked by a man she refused to identify to hand over her room key.
“She knew what he was going to do that is put an illicit substance in her bag. She said she didn’t look inside the bag, she didn’t touch the bag she did nothing in relation to the bag.”
Lagace said her role was to get the bag through customs and then hand it to another person.
However when the cruise ship docked in Sydney Australian Border Force officers boarded the vessel and searched her room finding almost 30kg cocaine concealed in the suitcase.
Lagace, her roommate Roberge and Tamine were arrested and charged with importing a commercial quantity of illegal drugs into Australia. Roberge and Tamine have both pleaded not guilty and are set to face trial at a later date.
Lagace said in a statement, “I feel remorse and anger at myself about being involved with people who are part of a dirty, filthy drug trade. It is something I will never be able to shake for the rest of my life.”
Judge Traill said she did not accept Lagace’s evidence she was under duress to pay back the loan when she agreed to smuggle the drugs saying she still had $5000 of the money in her bank account.
However Judge Traill gave Lagace a 25 per cent discount for her plea of guilty.
She will be released in February 2021.