Older, lonely Aussies prime targets for drug cartels smuggling meth into Australia

Hope of finding love online led to an innocent elderly man Melbourne’s outer suburbs becoming the centre of a federal probe into a meth smuggling ring. This is why authorities say anyone could be next.

Lonely older romantics are being catfished by international criminals and unwittingly recruited to smuggle meth into Australia under false pretences of finding love online.

“Sophisticated and deceptive” organised crime groups are preying on Australians aged 50 and over, with authorities warning they run the biggest risk of becoming “catchers” for criminal networks – unsuspecting importers that crime groups trick into receiving shipments so they do not have to import drugs themselves.

Authorities have so far detected enough chemicals in more than a dozen catfish drug smuggling scams across Victoria, WA, NSW and Queensland to make tens of millions of dollars worth of meth.

A criminal posing as a Cambodian woman looking for love online tricked a lonely 62-year-old Melbourne man into smuggling stationary supplies lined with meth precursors into Australia. Picture: Supplied

A shipment of sticky tape was lined with the chemicals. Picture: Supplied

In one incident last month, a 62-year-old man from Melbourne’s outer suburbs became “physically distressed” when he learned his online quest to find a companion had led to him being caught up in an international meth precursor smuggling operation.

The man believed he had fallen for a Cambodian woman whose aunt ran a stationery business and wanted to expand her operations into Australia.

But a criminal spent months fronting as the man’s online partner before tricking him into setting up a new business to receive shipments of sticky tape from the aunt that was lined with 10kg of pseudoephedrine, a precursor chemical used to cook meth, worth $400,000.

Australian Border Force officials seized 100 boxes of the tape in Perth bound for the man’s newly rented West Melbourne warehouse, where he was arrested.

That amount of pseudoephedrine could have made 7kg of meth worth $6.5m on the street.

The older man escaped a possible 25-year jail term, the maximum sentence for trafficking commercial amounts of drugs, after Australian Border Force officials found he was lonely and looking for company without any idea he had been chatting with a criminal network.

Authorities say other Australians are at risk of falling for the dangerous scam. Picture: Supplied

ABF regional investigations Superintendent Ben Michalke told the Herald Sun authorities were concerned about the man and other vulnerable people facing retribution from crime syndicates if a smuggling operation went awry.

“If they are being caught, there’s a risk that the organised crime group then turns on them and tries to intimidate them and threaten them with violence,” he said.

“These sorts of scam catfish scenarios are really significant and can and can really, significantly impact someone’s life.”

Superintendent Michalke said criminals were becoming more deceptive by deliberately targeting innocent and lonely people online for such high-risk operations.

“The 62-year-old had no knowledge of what he was doing or the commodities he was dealing with,” he said.

“He genuinely thought that he was dealing with stationary supplies and had no knowledge of the border control precursor drugs.

“They’ll employ these catchers through different means, but this way is quite unique to us.”

Criminals also prowl websites such as Airtasker, Facebook and Gumtree, posting ads seeking anyone who can receive deliveries filled with drugs to be collected at a later date.

Superintendent Michalke said the recent spike in catfish drug scams were a cautionary tale for other potential victims.

“You need to be alert and sceptical to these kinds of requests as you never know what illegal and dangerous activity you are getting yourself into,” he said.