Zhichen Zhang: RMIT fashion student tries to smuggle cigarettes
A young RMIT fashion student was busted trying to smuggle hundreds of thousands of cigarettes into Australia. The scheme came after he’d already pretended to be someone’s husband to make a quick buck.
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A young RMIT fashion student who was looking to make a quick buck was busted trying to smuggle more than 750,000 cigarettes into Australia.
Box Hill South’s Zhichen Zhang took part in an “elaborate” scheme to illegally import the goods in a bogus tiles delivery in an attempt to evade almost $600,000 in revenue costs.
The 25-year-old, who was just 23 at the time, fronted the County Court on Monday, August 31, having pleaded guilty to attempting to possess the tobacco products knowing they were intended to defraud the revenue.
The court heard the crime occurred during a period of 2018 when Zhang sought to make money dishonestly and illegally, including by pretending to be someone’s husband and by lending his name to people so they could buy and drive vehicles.
He was a mercenary in the cigarette importation scheme, for which he rented a storage unit at Storage King Knoxfield in July 2018 using a fake name, ID and address to receive the cigarettes.
The delivery of the goods, a shipping container from China purporting to be tiles, was addressed to a Blackburn tile business, the court heard.
But when it arrived outside the business on August 3, 2018, with its workers having no knowledge of the plan, a man met the delivery driver outside saying there was no space and it had to be taken to the storage unit.
Zhang and four men were at the unit waiting to unpack the container, unaware Australian Border Force police had seized the estimated 762,800 cigarettes that had been hidden in the hollowed out stacks of tiles.
The total revenue evaded for the not declaring the cigarettes would have been $596,132.76
Judge Felicity Hampel told the court she didn’t accept the submission that Zhang was a hapless victim who had been frightened into participating in the “elaborate” scheme.
“You made calculated decisions to make easy money,” she said.
The court heard Zhang had moved to Melbourne from Adelaide as an 18-year-old to attend Monash University then the Melbourne School of Fashion and RMIT, and worked as a shop assistant at Box Hill Central before Melbourne’s lockdown.
His lawyer said Zhang had excellent rehabilitation prospects, having never committed another offence, and having told police all about his offending.
Judge Hampel noted jail would be more onerous for Zhang as his first time and because of COVID-19 and his young age.
She said convicting him of the federal offence was a significant punishment considering his future, and handed him a 12-month Recognizance Release Order with a $1000 bond.
Judge Hampel said she would have sentenced him to 18 months’ jail, with a period of nine months to be served before the order if he hadn’t pleaded guilty.
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