Convicted drug mule ‘Cocaine Cassie’ Sainsbury has returned to Australia for the first time in five years with her new wife by her side after she was locked up on the other side of the world.
Sainsbury, 27, is set to live between Australia and Colombia where she spent 27 months in jail after she was caught trying to smuggle 5.8kg of cocaine out of the South American country in April, 2017.
She was sentenced to six years in jail but was released early from the notoriously tough El Buen Pastor prison in Bogota in April, 2020.
Sainsbury was forced to stay in Colombia as part of her bail conditions but on Friday, more than five years after her humiliating arrest, she finally touched down on home soil.
More than five years after her humiliating arrest for drug cocaine, Cassie Sainsbury was the focus of a happier airport visit, at last touching down on home soil at Sydney airport, accompanied by her Colombian wife Tatiana
Sainsbury is seen walking through Sydney Airport on Friday after touching down from Colombia
Sainsbury’s wife Tatiana wheeled the couple’s luggage through the airport
She walked calmly and expressionless through Sydney airport, ignoring the questions from waiting media about how she felt to be home.
Sainsbury was seen carrying her smartphone in one hand and donned a stylish coat, ripped jeans and midriff top.
A dazzling wedding ring was also spotted on her hand.
The pair quickly got into a minivan waiting at the airport. Sainsbury didn’t speak to camera crews nearby
Sainsbury, 27, walked briskly through Sydney airport, wearing a stylish coat, midriff top and ripped jeans, striding ahead of Tatiana, 34
The smartly-dressed Tatiana, sporting a sleeve tattoo and silver wristwatch, pushed the couple’s luggage through the airport and also lifted their bags
Her smartly-dressed wife Tatiana, 34, who works as a computer technician, sported a sleeve tattoo and silver wrist watch as she pushed the couple’s luggage through the airport.
A minivan was waiting for the couple as cameras snapped their every move.
Sainsbury is believed to have signed a lucrative deal to do a tell-all television interview with Ross Coulthart for Channel Seven’s Spotlight, with the reporter seen helping loud her luggage into the van.
Sainsbury was wearing her cherished engagement ring as she walked through Sydney airport
The convicted drug smuggler is seen getting into a minivan outside the airport on Friday
Channel seven reporter Ross Coulthart was seen with Sainsbury and Tatiana at the airport
Although she is keen to get back to her tiny hometown of Yorketown, 90km from Adelaide, the former inmate previously told Daily Mail Australia that married life would probably involve living between Australia and Colombia.
‘[Tatiana has] never been to Australia,’ Sainsbury said.
‘We’ll probably end up between Australia and Colombia because obviously her family is here so it will be like, some time here, some time there type of thing.’
Sainsbury said her whirlwind romance with Tatiana, which began mid last year, was completely unexpected.
Sainsbury donned ripped jeans and a midriff after landing in Australia on Friday
Sainsbury is believed to have signed a lucrative deal to a tell-all television interview with Ross Coulthart for Channel Seven’s Spotlight, with the reporter seen helping get her luggage into the van
‘We had shared a group of friends and one night we went out for a birthday and we literally hit it off,’ she said.
The pair quickly took their relationship to the next level with Tatiana getting down on one knee during a romantic beachfront dinner at Cartagena, Colombia in November.
At the time Sainsbury showed off her glitzy engagement ring on social media and posted about being flustered over trying to choose a wedding dress.
Sainsbury’s wife Tatiana proposed to her last November. She is seen wheeling the pair’s luggage through the airport
Friday marks the first time in five years Sainsbury has been in Australia
‘She put a ring on it!’ Sainsbury said of the engagement. ‘She’d been planning for a while trying to find a ring that she thought was perfect for me and in the end she found it.’
Sainsbury took to Instagram in March 2022 posting a selfie with the added hashtag #justmarried.
In July last year Sainsbury told Daily Mail Australia her new lover was unaware of her past and why she had made the headlines in Australia, but that had since changed.
‘I shared everything with her about everything,’ she said.
‘Basically [Tatiana] said she wasn’t going to judge me on my past, she was really mature about the whole situation.
Sainsbury’s expressions were hidden behind a face mask as she quickly left Sydney airport on Friday
Sainsbury, 27, confirmed she had exchanged vows with Tatiana (pictured) in a Instagram post to her 15,000 plus followers in March
‘I feel like I’m the happiest I’ve ever been. It’s nice to feel like I can be myself with no judgement from someone who is always there for me.’
Ahead of the wedding Sainsbury was reunited with her mother, Lisa Evans, in Colombia for the first time in four years.
An emotional video of the reunion showed Ms Evans wrapping her arms around her daughter while Tatiana stood by with a bouquet of flowers.
Sainsbury is pictured above at the time of her arrest in Colombia in April 2017
Sainsbury, who has proudly posted photos of her new physique after losing 29kg in prison, has returned to Australia five years after her humiliating arrest
Before her arrest, Sainsbury was a barmaid and later went into personal training.
Her life spiralled dramatically in 2017 when she was caught attempting to smuggle cocaine inside 18 boxes of headphones.
After her release, she tearfully revealed how her life had hit one low point after another.
In desperate financial trouble she fell into working as a shady ‘courier’ in Colombia, a nation synonymous with the global cocaine trade, after working as a sex worker in a Sydney brothel.
Sainsbury worked at Club 220 in western Sydney in a desperate bid to make ends meet after her and then-fiance Scott Broadbridge’s gym went under.
Convicted Australian drug dealer ‘Cocaine’ Cassie Sainsbury (pictured right) married her IT whiz girlfriend Tatiana (left) in Colombia in March
In March Sainsbury shared the news of her engagement last year to her 15,000 Instagram followers, posting a photo proudly posing with her ring (pictured)
In Colombia she claimed to have been raped by the mastermind of the failed smuggling plot.
Sainsbury claimed her drink was spiked by a Brazilian man named ‘Angelo’ at his Bogota unit.
She claimed the safety of her family was threatened and that she believed she was only transporting documents, not kilograms of cocaine.
‘Tatiana said she wasn’t going to judge me on my past, she was really mature about the whole situation’ Sainsbury said of her new love
Sainsbury (pictured being escorted to a court hearing in Bogota in 2017) became engaged to a fellow female inmate, Joli Pico, while in prison, before her current relationship with Tatiana
Sainsbury was just 22-years-old when she was arrested with 5.8 kilograms of cocaine hidden in her luggage at Bogota airport (pictured, arriving for a court hearing in Bogota in 2017)
She made international headlines and stood numbly as she was photographed with 18 numbered parcels, all containing cocaine with an estimated street value of $2million.
While behind bars Sainsbury had a nine month relationship with a fellow female inmate, Joli Pico.
The pair were briefly engaged after Pico proposed in front of others behind bars, but after Sainsbury was released she moved on with another inmate.
‘Unfortunately things with Joli, they didn’t last,’ Sainsbury told Brisbane radio station B105.
‘I came out of prison and then she became a different person, and she got with somebody else inside as well.’
Sainsbury came out as gay in prison and had a nine month relationship with a fellow inmate, Joli Pico
Cassie Sainsbury pictured with her mum Lisa Evans. Cassie grew up in Yorketown, South Australia
While her daughter was behind bars, Ms Evans pleaded with the Australian Government in 2020 to help her daughter who she said was struggling to make ends meet while stuck in Columbia.
She was released from prison in 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic but wasn’t allowed to leave Colombia until now. Sainsbury said the lowest point of her whole ordeal since she was first arrested was when she became seriously ill with bacteria in her stomach while inside El Buen Pastor prison.
‘When I became sick I was taken out of prison into hospital and that is what saved me,’ she said.
While in prison she was locked in a two-metre by two-metre cell with up to five other inmates.
She says she still has nightmares about it.
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