{"id":766879,"date":"2026-06-29T02:27:13","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T02:27:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/766879\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T02:27:13","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T02:27:13","slug":"melbourne-airport-airline-employee-charged-over-alleged-500k-heroin-stash","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/766879\/","title":{"rendered":"Melbourne airport: Airline employee charged over alleged $500K heroin stash"},"content":{"rendered":"

An airline<\/a> employee has been charged after she was caught allegedly attempting to carry more than one kilogram of heroin off her flight into Melbourne<\/a> last week.<\/p>\n

The 26-year-old Thai national<\/a> had been working on board an international flight which landed at Melbourne airport last Thursday, June 25.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

One of the 12 tote bags the airline employee allegedly attempted to bring in to Melbourne airport.\u00a0AFP<\/p>\n

She disembarked carrying 12 tote bags, which were flagged by the Australian Border Force (ABF) during X-ray screening.<\/p>\n

When the bags were examined more closely, a white powder was discovered hidden inside the bags\u2019 linings, which during presumptive testing allegedly returned a positive result for heroin.<\/p>\n

The drugs had an estimated street value of $500,000.<\/p>\n

The Australian Federal Police seized the tote bags and arrested the woman.<\/p>\n

She has since been charged with possessing and importing\u00a0a marketable quantity of a border controlled drug.<\/p>\n

Both offences carry a maximum prison time of 25 years.<\/p>\n

The woman has been denied bail and is expected to face the charges in Melbourne Magistrates\u2019 Court on September 14.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

When the bags were examined more closely, ABF officers found a white powder concealed inside the lining.\u00a0AFP<\/p>\n

ABF Commander Clint Sims said criminal syndicates often targeted trusted insiders, including airline crew, as part of their attempts to smuggle illicit substances into Australia.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnyone attempting to import illicit drugs into Australia, regardless of rank or position, will be targeted and face the full force of the law,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"An airline employee has been charged after she was caught allegedly attempting to carry more than one kilogram…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":766880,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-766879","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766879","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=766879"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/766879\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/766880"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=766879"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=766879"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=766879"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}