How heroin trafficker Michelle Tran became the Queen of Richmond

A decade of dirty deals helped Michelle Tran live the high life while her customers terrorised Richmond’s streets.

Malaysian flight attendant Zailee Zainal pleaded guilty to smuggling heroin into Australia.

A career in heroin trafficking built a life of affluence for Michelle Ngoc Tran, leading her to crown herself as the Queen of Richmond.

In her decades at the top of her dirty trade, an incalculable number of customers were helped to the depths of addiction by the erstwhile nail technician’s drugs — and greed.

Scenes of users shooting up near schools, slumped on footpaths and defecating in Richmond laneways were never part of Tran’s life.

She was living in another world, in which her “soldiers” would hold one of her six phones for her to speak when she needed to make a deal.

Images tendered to the court of the drugs and method of concealment.

While she bragged of dealing heroin since she was a teen, her Facebook profile projected the life of a normal, sociable woman, enjoying night-life, restaurants and barbecues.

One shared photo features large wads of cash, thousands of dollars fanned out on a table after someone’s good fortune.

It was certainly the kind of money she was well accustomed to handling.

In January, 2017, Tran put up pictures of herself beaming at a Tatts outlet with the caption: “Winner winner #powerball happy”. There were numerous shared posts related to prosperity, but not a sniff of how she was really attaining her wealth.

That was all in the shadows until a major surveillance ­operation by the Australian Federal Police, Victoria Police, Border Force and the Australian Criminal Intelligence Commission took her down.

Cash-hungry flight attendants were used to help smuggle up to $8 million of pure heroin from Malaysia to Australia.

Richmond drug queen Michell Ngoc Tran

In just three months in 2018, they found — and later proved — Tran arranged the importation of heroin valued at between $3.5m and $5m, from Malaysia.

It can only be surmised how much of the drug her pipeline pumped into Melbourne.

Her connection was a supplier in Asia known as Mr Hanoi, and the mules were cabin crew members of Malindo Air, carrying the cargo in their underwear. Each kilo carted in on their high-risk missions was referred to by Tran as a “ticket”.

Tran, 49, made $20,000 profit a ticket, taking the drugs and sending sums in the region of $150,000 back to Mr Hanoi in foil-lined biscuit tins borne by the couriers.

Importing as many as 15 tickets a month meant she was making an incredible amount of money.

At the County Court on Thursday, judge Michael ­Cahill handed down an 18-year jail term, with a non-parole ­period of 13 years, calling her the ­director of a “highly-­sophisticated, international drug consortium”.

MORE NEWS:

MOBILE SEIZED IN BID TO PIN DOWN CELESTE’S KILLER

LEVEL CROSSINGS THAT SHOULD BE REMOVED NEXT