Two young New Zealand women have been busted for allegedly smuggling methamphetamine worth $38 million into Australia in their suitcases.<\/p>\n
The 22-year-olds were nabbed on Monday after being pulled aside for a baggage examination at Melbourne Airport after arriving\u00a0on a flight from Malaysia.<\/p>\n
The Australian Border Force said in a statement officers found 36kg of a white crystalline substance in the women’s suitcases that tested positive for methamphetamine.<\/p>\n
That quantity of the drug could have been broken down into\u00a0360,000 street deals, the statement said.<\/p>\n
The women were remanded in custody after appearing in\u00a0Melbourne Magistrates’ Court yesterday.\u00a0<\/p>\n
They were charged with importing and possessing a commercial quantity of a border-controlled drug, which carries a maximum sentence of life imprisonment.<\/p>\n
The pair are due back in court on March 13, 2026.<\/p>\n
Australian Federal Police detective acting superintendent Jarrod Ragg said law enforcement agencies were working together to combat attempts by\u00a0criminal networks using air travel\u00a0for drug smuggling.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe AFP is committed to defending Australia from drug imports and trafficking.<\/p>\n
“We remain focused on disrupting criminals who seek to wreak harm and havoc in our communities through illicit substances,” he said.<\/p>\n
– Allied Media<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Two young New Zealand women have been busted for allegedly smuggling methamphetamine worth $38 million into Australia in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":154503,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":["post-154502","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154502","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=154502"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/154502\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/154503"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=154502"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=154502"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=154502"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}