Elderly drug mule Teresa Ogden-Michel freed from Sydney jail

A US suburban grandma, scammed out of $500k and tricked into arriving at Sydney airport with a huge haul of meth, has described her nine months in Silverwater jail. READ HER STORY

A “treasury official” who looked nothing like his identity card, a $500,000 fake investment con and a random trip to Australia via Zimbabwe with bags she was told were just “gifts for officials”.

For cleanskin American grandmother Teresa Ogden-Michel, 79, all the warning signs were there, but for years they were missed.

Even a simple Google search of the email account promising her millions in returns on the “investment” would have identified the scam.

But her two-year ordeal of being scammed out of her family’s savings only got worse in June 2022, when Border Force officials found 15kg of meth and 1kg of cocaine in her luggage at Sydney airport

She had been duped into unwittingly being a drug mule by the very people who already conned her out of thousands of dollars.

Ms Ogden-Michel and her husband Eduard. This picture on her prison cell wall was “the only thing that kept me going”.

Speaking for the first time, after nine months held on remand in Silverwater and Dillwinya jails surrounded by human excrement, killers and cleaning the toilet in her cell with her own hands, her message to other would-be victims is blunt.

“Talk about idiots, we sadly know now we were,” she said from her Kansas home, with her husband beside her.

The couple’s trip was supposed to be once in a lifetime.

Ms Ogden-Michel faced a maximum penalty of spending life in jail if convicted, charged with possessing a commercial quantity of drugs, but after being found not guilty in the Sydney District Court last month she is finally home.

She is one of 18 elderly foreign nationals the Sunday Telegraph revealed last year had been preyed on and duped into ferrying drugs down under.

A suspicious email from a “HM Treasury” official in 2021 set of this chain of events.

By March 2022 Ms Ogden-Michel was deep in the conman’s web when that the same official promised to release an “investment fund” to her after flying to Cape Town, Zimbabwe and Australia.

“It is good I let you know that the reason you are travelling to Cape Town is for you to go and sign for your Original Funds Classified Document (OFCD) as that will legally empower the payment officer to transfer your funds of US$10.5 million,” the email reads.

A cell in the Dillwynia in Windsor, similar to the one in which Ms Ogden-Michel watched her Kansas City Chiefs win the Superbowl from. Picture: NCA NewsWire

In Africa, it seemed like a holiday of a lifetime, capped off with a trip for Ms Ogden-Michel, her husband Eduard Michel and handicapped daughter to the iconic Victoria Falls.

“We wanted to see Victoria Falls, that was on our one of our bucket list items,” she said.

“And then we always said we wanted to go to Australia but we knew financially we probably would never be able to afford it.”

But the moment they tried to check into their flight to Sydney at a Zimbabwe airport things took a dark turn.

“When I saw the (extra) suitcases, I told him I did not want to take those … and I said ‘well, I’m not comfortable taking those that’s not what I expected’,” she said.

One of the ID’s sent by the scammer to Ms Ogden-Michel, attempting to prove they were legitimate.

“He asked me how my family was. And I said they’re fine. And he said ‘let’s hope they stay that way’.”

The padlocked bags which her trial heard did not have any of Ms Ogden-Michel’s DNA on it, she was reassured, were just gifts for Australian banks officials waiting for her on the other side.

The ID of the man left on Ms Ogden-Michel’s hotel bookings.

She says the man is the same person who forced her to carry the bags she later found out contained drugs.

The man who packed them, and stole her money, made a crucial mistake and left his passport on the hotel booking that Ms Ogden-Michel’s friends were eventually able to track down.

When she was processed into police custody at Surry Hills police station, her husband and daughter forced to fly back home, the first thing a legal aid lawyer told her was: “you’re never leaving Australia”.

“That is the nastiest, filthiest, dirtiest place I’ve ever seen in my life,” Ms Ogden-Michel said.

“The (cell) they put me in was filthy. It had human faeces on the ceiling.

“God, I mean, that’s the first things that came out of her mouth ‘I’m never leaving Australia. I’m gonna spend the rest of my life in prison’ down there.”

Scans of the bags at Sydney Airport.

They would find 15kg of meth and 1.5kg of cocaine.

During her police interview and even after spending months in jail Ms Ogden-Michel never told authorities the full story of how she was scammed and tricked into bringing the drugs.

Police sources to this day are bemused that Ms Ogden-Michel only finally told the full story while giving evidence at her trial.

“My lawyer asked me why I didn’t tell the police I said ‘because I didn’t trust them’,” she said.

“I lost trust, when were sitting in the interview room there at the airport. I was told by this guy that got me involved that someone at the airport will communicate to me about the suitcases. So who am I supposed to trust at the airport?”.

Dillwinya prison was a world away from the suburban slice of Kansas she called home, but even among killers and drug dealers she found comfort.

Dillwinya was where she spent the most time. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gaye Gerard

“I had a TV so at least I got to watch my Kansas City Chiefs win the Super Bowl,” she said.

Ms Ogden-Michel was affectionately dubbed “nanna” by her cellmates almost half her age, who rallied around her early into her incarceration.

“I was crying one day after talking to (her husband) and it was like the week after my birthday in October and they got me off the phone,” she said.

“They said ‘come over here with us’ … they had put together a box for me. It had shampoo, body wash, they had different kinds of foods that they thought I might eat and they had on the front of it a sign they made that said ‘you are loved’.”

“We had this little group of three of us, there’s myself, nanna, there’s Naomi the mother of the jail and she’s like my daughter and then there’s Katie my granddaughter. So the three of us were family.

She described the jail as “hell”. Picture: NCA NewsWire / Gaye Gerard

“Naomi is going to get married and I’m supposed to be her matron of honour. So how we’re going to work that out? I don’t know.”

Touching down and running into her husband Eduard’s arms three weeks ago there was only one thing she was craving.

“There is this place called Jumping Catfish, I love fish and my husband loves fish. So that’s where we went,” she said.

Now back home she is fighting to keep hold of her house and have her daughter returned to her custody.

“Well with that, (after prison), I think it’ll probably be like a walk in the park.”

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