An Australian grandmother convicted of drug smuggling has lost her appeal in a Japanese court despite her arguing she was a victim of an elaborate romance scam.
Perth woman Donna Nelson, 59, was appealing a six-year sentence handed down in December 2024 for bringing two kilograms of methamphetamine into the country in January 2023.
Nelson was arrested at Japan’s Narita International Airport, near Tokyo, after customs officials found the drugs hidden under a false bottom in a suitcase.
The Aboriginal community leader had told the court she was unaware of the drugs and she was carrying the suitcase for a man she hoped to marry.
The man called Kelly, whom she met online in 2020, told her he was the Nigerian owner of a fashion business.
In 2023, he paid her to travel to Japan via Laos, and asked her to collect dress samples from an acquaintance in the Southeast Asian country.
She was supposed to meet him in Japan but he never showed up.
On Thursday, Tokyo High Court judge Takeshi Irie dismissed Nelson’s defence lawyers’ request for her acquittal and argument that she was a romance scam victim with no awareness or intent of drug trafficking for profit.
The judge said Nelson was fully capable and had time to think and realise that something was wrong with the man’s request.
She has 14 days to decide whether to appeal to the top court, but one of Nelson’s daughters, Kristal Hilaire, said her mother had not made a decision.
Listening to the sentencing was hard, Ms Hilaire told reporters outside court. “I felt it was wrong … At times I didn’t really want to hear it.”
“I had been so hopeful that this was going to be the end. It’s very tiring to keep fighting this fight. I just thought we all would be able to rest and be going home with her.”
One of the few people to have visited Nelson in jail is Monash University academic Monique Whitty, who saw her twice in June over several hours behind glass.
The professor, who has been researching romance scams for nearly two decades, conducted interviews with her that were used as expert evidence tendered by Nelson’s legal team for the appeal.
“She did break down for some of it (the interviews) and for other parts she was really angry at the person that was talking to her, and the whole situation that she was duped into,” she told AAP on Thursday.
“She had mix of being absolutely distraught about what it’s done to her life and feeling very frustrated with herself. Victims always blame themselves.”
The professor said Nelson’s case bore all the hallmarks of a textbook scam where fraudsters bombard their victims and build a trusting relationship that drags them into risky situations.
“Everything that I asked her but also the events that transpired just fits into the same normal modus operandi … where they (fraudsters) distract them, wear them down and build up a trusting, hyper-personal relationship,” she said.
Dr Whitty described the grandmother as a fighter “who knows that she’s done nothing wrong and she wants justice for herself”.
