A Brisbane woman who was tricked into becoming a drug mule by an African scam artist has opened up about the squalid conditions of the Cambodian jail she spent six years in.
Single mother Yoshe Taylor, 47, was duped by her online African boyfriend into trying to bring two kilograms of heroin back to Australia from Cambodia.
In 2014, she was found guilty of drug smuggling and was sentenced to 23 years in the the notorious Prey Sar Prison.
‘I did not want to spend 23 years away from my children. I actually thought the death penalty was a much better idea than being in jail for 23 years,’ she said.
Each cramped cell inside the women’s prison had 99 inmates but not enough beds, meaning many had to sleep side-by-side on the floor.
Yoshe Taylor (pictured) spent six years in a Cambodian prison after being conned into carrying drugs by a man she met on dating app Tagged. The Australian woman was freed in May
Airport customs officers searched Ms Taylor’s bag and found just over 2 kilograms of heroin that had been sewn into the lining of the bag
Ms Taylor would often stay up late at night exchanging messages with Precious, who sent her back to Australia from Cambodia with a backpack with 2kg of heroin sewn into it
Having had two Australian women put behind bars because of his scam, the law finally caught up with Precious (pictured) and he was sentenced to 27 years in prison
There were three toilet bowls and no proper plumbing and no curtains inside the cells.
Ms Taylor said she lost hope, and even stopped eating because she ‘didn’t feel hungry’.
Eventually Ms Taylor was transferred to a different prison.
Ms Taylor’s nightmare started in 2013, when she met South African businessman Precious, 24, through the dating app Tagged when she was 41-years-old.
Battling depression and struggling to keep up with mortgage repayments, when her internet boyfriend offered Ms Taylor the opportunity to fly to Cambodia to meet him she saw it as the perfect escape.
‘I had been all by myself for a long time, four years, just me and the kids,’ she told the ABC’s Australian Story.
‘I was talking to him for a long time; I thought I got to know him and he seemed very nice.’
Ms Taylor would often stay up late at night exchanging messages with Precious.
Ms Taylor couldn’t afford good legal representation or anyone to help her, and sometimes appeared in court without a translator
Ms Taylor lost her appeal in 2016, and would most likely still be rotting in prison if it weren’t for Australian lawyers who helped get her out this year
He would tell her that when it came to love it was ‘her or nothing’, while also saying he worried about whether she was sleeping or eating well.
‘You have a busy day in the morning,’ Ms Taylor’s lover told her.
But Precious was not a 43-year-old businessman from South Africa like he claimed.
In reality he was a 24-year-old Nigerian whose name was Precious Chineme Nwoko.
Ms Taylor told Precious he was too young for her and suggested they’d be better off as friends.
But the smooth-talking lothario managed to convince her to go in on a business with his friend to start a shop selling Cambodian arts and crafts in Brisbane.
Ms Taylor accepted the offer, who saw the shop as an opportunity to get back on her feet financially as a single mother.
On Ms Taylor’s third trip to Cambodia to go over some business details, she was asked to carry a backpack of fabric back to Australia.
Her Cambodian jail hell came to an end earlier this year when she was found to be an innocent victim of the drug smuggling scam, and she returned home to Brisbane to reunite with her two children
She looked in the bag to make sure there was nothing in there that shouldn’t be, but unbeknownst to her, Cambodian police had already received a tip off from Australian authorities.
Airport customs officers searched Ms Taylor’s bag and found just over 2 kilograms of heroin that had been sewn into the lining of the bag.
Ms Taylor couldn’t afford good legal representation or anyone to help her, and sometimes appeared in court without a translator.
‘I knew I wasn’t important so I didn’t think anyone would do anything to help me. I was a mushroom I didn’t know what was going on,’ she said.
Ms Taylor lost her appeal in 2016, and would most likely still be rotting in prison if it weren’t for Australian lawyers who found her case by chance.
Barrister Moya O’Brien heard of Ms Taylor’s situation through a woman who goes by the name of ‘Kay Smith’ who also met the African scam artist over a dating app.
Eventually, having gained Ms Smith’s trust, he also asked her to travel to Cambodia to visit him.
Precious paid for her flights, passport and accommodation, but said the trip had to be limited to only four days as he had business to attend to overseas.
‘I was petrified the whole journey,’ Ms Smith said of her trip but that anxiety subsided when he turned up at the airport to collect her as promised.
That night they went out for dinner and asked her to marry him. She said yes.
On the final night of her whirlwind trip Precious asked Ms Smith to take two laptop bags back to Australia with her.
Having gone through the bags and checked the contents, the first moment Ms Smith discovered what was in them was at customs at Melbourne Airport.
In 2014, Ms Taylor was found guilty of drug smuggling and was sentenced to 23 years in the the notorious Prey Sar Prison
Each cell inside the women’s prison had 99 inmates and not enough beds
Ms Smith spent six months in a maximum security women’s prison in Melbourne and then 18 months on bail before police dropped the charges against her.
Ms Smith told ms O’Brien that she had heard of a woman in a Cambodian jail who had also been set up by Precious.
Ms O’Brien said Ms Taylor appeared to have ‘fallen off the radar’ and met former investigative journalist Luke McMahon.
Mr who eventually flew to Cambodia and tracked down Ms Taylor – who had already spent three years behind bars.
Mr Mcmahon and Ms O’Brien found lawyer Alex Wilson, who worked her case for free.
A selection of the drugs discovered hidden inside Kay Smith’s two laptop bags (pictured) after she was also scammed by Precious
The highest court in Cambodia ruled there wasn’t enough evidence that Ms Taylor was aware there was drugs in her backpack.
Her Cambodian jail hell came to an end earlier this year when she was found to be an innocent victim of the drug smuggling scam.
She returned home to Queensland and was reunited with her two children.
The law finally caught up with Precious during a raid on the drug den where he and other members of his syndicate lived. He was sentenced to 27 years jail.