A former bank clerk in Switzerland was pulled into a scheme to transport cocaine worth nearly €400,000 after he fell victim to a fake inheritance internet scam.
Angelo Zullino (49) was about to board a plane to London when Customs officers at Dublin Airport stopped him and searched his bags.
Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard officers were acting on a confidential tip-off.
The search of his suitcases uncovered packages of powder hidden inside false inserts in the lining and more drugs inside an empty laptop bag. Garda Nicola Duffy said the 5.4kg of cocaine had an estimated street value of €382,620.
Zullino, of Seehaldenweg, Switzerland, pleaded guilty to possession of cocaine for sale or supply at Dublin Airport on September 27th, 2015.
Lawyers for Zullino said that before this offence the Italian native had lived in Switzerland, where he had worked as a bank clerk.
In 2007 he made contact with someone on an internet dating website who claimed to be a South African woman named Chantelle.
This woman claimed she was due to inherit $1 million, but the money was in London and she needed £275,000 in sterling up front to get it.
Needed £275,000
After Zullino had paid £200,000 over to the woman, he stopped hearing from her. Zullino thought that was the end, but sometime later she contacted him again and offered a way for him to get the money back from her associates.
She told him he had to travel to Dubai to pick up luggage that contained documents for a property transfer in London.
Dominic McGinn SC, defending, said his client had a very real suspicion the bags contained something worse, but said “he had to get himself out of a hole he had fallen into”.
“That is how he was sucked into this,” counsel said. He said such “advance fee” frauds prey on people’s naivety, while he also accepted an element of greed was involved.
‘Pretty depressing tale’
Judge Martin Nolan said it was a pretty depressing tale and that Zullino had behaved in a very naïve and stupid way.
He said by the way Zullino had lost his fortune to characters over the internet, he was “not too worldly wise”.
He said Zullino was otherwise a hard-working man with no previous criminal record who had made a very serious misjudgment.
Judge Nolan said the fact Zullino was not Irish made prison more difficult for him, and the court could take this into account in sentencing.
He imposed a sentence of three and a half years, backdated to last September when he went into custody.