Woman who smuggled 1,600 MDMA pills into a Sydney music festival got 40 for free

A childcare worker caught smuggling 1,597 ecstasy pills into a music festival in her vagina and a ‘huge bra’ was to keep 40 for herself.

Grace Poo was arrested at the Midnight Mafia event in Sydney’s Olympic Park last May when sniffer dogs detected her trying to enter about 4pm.

The 23-year-old initially denied having any drugs on her, but later admitted ‘OK, I have a lot of MDMA… in my top and some inside of me’.

She pleaded guilty to commercial drug supply and faces significant jail time for her ‘planned commercial enterprise’.

As payment for taking the drugs inside the festival, she was offered $400 cash, 40 ‘freebies’, and a festival ticket.

Judge Graeme Turnbull said in Penrith District Court that Poo’s crimes showed ‘sophisticated’ planning to smuggle in the $50,000 worth of drugs.

He said at her sentencing hearing on Thursday there was evidence Poo planned to sell some of the 40 ‘freebie’ pills and keep the profits for herself.

Poo’s co-accused Julian Martusciello also pleaded guilty to drug supply after cops alleged he’d supplied her with at least 213 of the pills.

Court documents revealed how the pair wrote to each other planning how to smuggle the drugs into the event. 

‘Hey grace keep this Saturday free please. For MM… split some downstairs and some each boob,’ Martusciello wrote.

‘2 (packages) left boob, 2 right boob and a small one downstairs’. 

In response to his message Poo wrote: ‘Okay I’ll wear an actual bra this time’.

Court documents revealed how the pair allegedly wrote to each other planning how to smuggle the drugs into the event

Martusciello insisted: ‘You have to for sure. Big bra,’ to which Poo concurred: ‘Just bought myself a huge bra so I’m all set… so long as can fit downstairs.’ 

Poo’s lawyer Siobhain Climo asked Judge Turnbull not to send her client to jail because she was vulnerable and responding to psychological counselling.

She said Poo claimed to hear voices while smoking marijuana last year and she and her gambling addict mother, who had her own mental problems, were homeless for about a year before the crime.

The court heard they were ‘financially destitute’ but were now receiving Centrelink payments and found assisted housing.

However, Judge Turnbull said Poo had no psychological illness and her mental health issues may stem from smoking marijuana.

He said he was not convinced they decreased the criminal culpability of her actions and warned she would be sentenced on what she had done.

‘This is not a case of a bunch of mates each with a couple of pills… putting them in a sandwich bag and getting them through,’ he said, according to News Corp.

‘She may well be a courier, but at the end of the day this is not a spontaneous shoving of a grab bag of pills down the pants or in your bra.’ 

Grace Poo had attempted to smuggle the drugs into Sydney’s Midnight Mafia Music Festival (pictured) 

Ms Climo asked the court to take into account Poo’s ‘extra curial punishment’ of her case being publicised in the media.

This included ‘the depiction of her face, the way in which the drugs were concealed, the fact they were secreted internally’ and gave the impression she was a big drug dealer.

Judge Turnbull was largely unmoved by this argument and what matter was that Poo committed a crime.

‘I am just wondering if naming and shaming is going to be enough and… I am struggling,’ he said.

Sentencing hearings for both Poo and Martusciello continue and they will be sentenced next week.

Poo,(pictured) allegedly shoved the party drug caps down a ‘big bra’ she’d purchased previously