Former boxing champ convicted for smuggling $1.6m of cocaine into Cairns for Spanish crime lord

A DRUG smuggler’s downfall from the podiums of the Spanish boxing world to the gates of prison could have been taken straight from the script of a classic cocaine film.

JPG - USE PDF VERSION IN PRINT? A map depicting the international travels of convicted Spanish cocaine smuggler Jose Lozano Garcia. PICTURE: CAIRNS POST

JOSE Lozano Garcia’s downfall from the podiums of the Spanish boxing world to the gates of Lotus Glen Correctional Centre could have been taken straight from the script of a classic cocaine film.

The four-time national middleweight champion, who unwittingly took an international drug running job from a Spanish crime lord when he fell on tough financial times, has been locked away for nine years in prison.

Lozano Garcia will be eligible for parole after serving four-and-a-half years and will likely be deported to Spain upon his release from custody.

The 60-year-old was caught by Australian customs officials carrying 2.3kg of cocaine — which experts say would be worth about $1.6 million on the street — through Cairns Airport on April 11.

It was the fateful end to a daring journey, which took Lozano Garcia from the Spanish capital of Madrid to Cairns via the US cities of Miami, Houston and Honolulu, and Micronesian island of Guam.

Concealments of cocaine which were sewn into the lining of luggage carried into Cairns Airport by Spanish national Jose Lozano Garcia. Picture: Supplied

In a Cairns Supreme Court trial which ended late yesterday, Lozano Garcia pleaded not guilty to the Commonwealth charge of importing a marketable quantity of a border-controlled substance.

He said through a thick Spanish accent that he thought it was illegal cash, not drugs, which were professionally sewn into the lining of three bags given to him in Florida.

The court heard Lozano Garcia met at a Miami Starbucks with members of an international crime gang who gave him the concealed drugs as they drove him to the airport.

At the current euro exchange rate, Lozano Garcia was to be paid the equivalent of about $23,000 for the job.

“I didn’t ask questions,” he said.

“People with bags don’t need to have a name.

“Sometimes it’s better to not know too much.

“If I knew it was drugs I would never have come to Australia.”

The law required that ­Lozano Garcia need only have been “reckless to the ­circumstance” that the contraband was cocaine in order for him to be guilty of the crime.

60-year-old Jose Lozano Garcia was caught at Cairns International Airport by Australian customs officials carrying 2.3kg of cocaine, which experts say would be worth about $1.6 million on the street. Federal Agent Ben Koch with the seized bags. Picture: Marc McCormack

Justice Jim Henry, who said Lozano Garcia struck him as a “smart” and “intelligent” man, gave him the “benefit of the doubt” during sentencing as to whether he genuinely thought he was smuggling cash.

“The temptation presented to you was too much to resist, of making money by acting as a mule or courier,” Justice Henry said.

“A man who was prepared to travel from one continent to another, receive packages, and then import them to a third continent and not be prepared to ask questions, had to have realised there was a real prospect that the criminals he was dealing with were not necessarily telling him the full truth about what you were carrying.”

Originally published as Former boxing champ convicted for smuggling $1.6m of cocaine into Cairns for Spanish crime lord