Ma Corazon ‘Cory’ Mezaks, Ian Richard Hanson jailed for attempt to import 10.8kg of meth

A Gold Coast woman has been jailed for her role in an attempt to import more than 10kg of methamphetamine, with 100 per cent purity, into Australia. Her co-defendant has previously been sentenced.

Ma Corazon Mezaks, 50, leaving the QEII Courts of Law Complex in Brisbane in 2022. Picture: Matthew Poon

A Gold Coast mother has been jailed for her role in attempting to import more than 10 kilograms of methamphetamine, with a street value of up to $2.7 million, into Australia.

Surfers Paradise woman Ma Corazon Mezaks, 50, known more commonly as ‘Cory’, pleaded guilty recently in the Brisbane Supreme Court to possessing a commercial quantity of unlawfully imported border-controlled drugs.

The court was told that in September 2021, United States authorities seized an international mail article containing 10.8kg of methamphetamine, with a purity of 100 per cent, secreted within a computer tower.

The package was addressed to Mezaks at an address in Surfers Paradise.

The Australian Federal Police were informed and the meth was swapped with an inert substance.

The 100 per cent pure methamphetamine weighed a shade over 10.8kg. Picture: AFP

Mezaks’ job was to collect the package and deliver it to her co-defendant, Ian Richard Hanson, who was sentenced previously.

“You were involved to the extent of being a courier for a much larger drug operation,” Justice Catherine Muir said.

Mezaks and Hanson were arrested when she was in the process of handing over the package to her co-defendant.

The methamphetamine hidden within a computer tower mailed from the United States. Picture: AFP

She told officers she was a drug user, wanted to buy drugs, and was “helping out” Hanson, who was additionally in possession of a cardboard box containing $411,900 cash at the point of arrest.

The court inferred the pair were to exchange their respective packages – the cash and the methamphetamine – in a transaction organised by higher-ups.

The court accepted Mezaks did not specifically know what was contained in the illicit package, but she was reckless as to its contents, and she stood to gain some sort of benefit from her role in the transaction, although what it was, the court knew not.

The court was told Mezaks, who had no criminal history, had lived a “complicated life burdened with loss, grief and addiction”.

Cash seized from Ian Richard Hanson, 69. Picture: AFP

Born in the Philippines, Mezaks has been a widow since 2005, when the father of her two children, one of whom lives with autism and an intellectual impairment, and is assisted by Mezaks, died.

She had a reasonable work history, including stints in cleaning and warehousing, but had struggled with addiction since 2016, and there was evidence she suffered from major depressive disorder, generalised anxiety disorder and chronic pain, the court heard.

Mezaks was sentenced to three years’ imprisonment, suspended after serving 12 months on condition she enter into a $500, three-year good-behaviour bond.

Hanson, 69, was sentenced back in November 2023 after pleading guilty at an earlier stage of the court proceeding.

He faced an additional charge of money laundering and was sentenced to five years’ imprisonment, with parole eligibility set at the halfway point of his jail term.

Hanson, who previously served 13 years in Singapore’s notorious Changi Prison for cannabis trafficking – he also received 15 lashes with a rattan cane – likewise asserted he had no knowledge of the package’s contents and simply became involved as a favour to a “guy” he “owed... a lot of favours”.

“It would have needed to be an enormous favour, or a lot of favours, that this ‘guy’ did for you to justify running the risks,” Justice Peter Applegarth said during Hanson’s sentencing hearing.

Originally published as Ma Corazon ‘Cory’ Mezaks, Ian Richard Hanson jailed for attempt to import 10.8kg of meth