Brazilian woman who smuggled nearly €87k of cocaine into Dublin Airport jailed

Sunday World

5 days ago

When questioned by the immigration officers, Carvalho told them she had swallowed about 50 or 60 pellets of cocaine and was storing more 'in her person'.
A young woman who ingested and smuggled 110 pellets of cocaine worth nearly €87,000 into the country from Brazil has been jailed for three years.
Beatriz Carvalho (23) of no fixed abode in Sao Paolo, Brazil, was stopped by immigration officers at Dublin Airport after she travelled into the country via Paris on November 17 last year, Dublin Circuit Criminal Court heard.
The officers were suspicious of Carvalho as she was travelling alone, Garda Cian Keating told Elizabeth Murphy BL, prosecuting.
When questioned by the officers, Carvalho told them she had swallowed about 50 or 60 pellets of cocaine and was storing more 'in her person', the court heard.
She had €1,345 in cash on her person and said she was being paid the Brazilian equivalent of €2,000 to travel to Ireland with the drugs.
Dublin Airport.
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While in the airport, Carvalho went to the bathroom and passed seven pellets in the presence of an officer and also retrieved another 30 pellets from where she had placed them internally.
Upon her arrest, she was taken to Beaumont Hospital where she stayed for the next few days passing the pellets. A total of 110 pellets of cocaine were retrieved with a street value of €86,763, the court heard.
Carvalho pleaded guilty to one count of importing drugs to the country at Dublin Airport on November 17, 2024. The court heard it was her first time leaving the country and she has no previous convictions in Brazil. She has been in custody since her arrest.
Patrick Gageby SC, defending, said his client was a young mother to a five-year-old son, whom she gave birth to while she was still in school. He said she lived in a very poor suburb of Sao Paolo. She had no permanent employment, but worked as a contract waitress and cleaner.
A number of letters were handed into court from Carvalho's parents and her sister. Her child is now in the care of his grandparents and his emotional wellbeing has been severely impacted by his mother's absence, the court heard.
They speak on the phone every day and every day he asks when she is coming home, Carvalho's sister said in her letter to the court.
Handing down sentence today, Judge Orla Crowe said Carvalho had engaged in a 'risky undertaking', both for herself personally and in terms of the damage drugs do to society.
She said the amount of drugs involved was an aggravating factor in the case. 'Foreign nationals can't think they can bring illegal drugs into this country,' she said.
In terms of mitigation, the judge noted Carvalho's early admissions and guilty plea, her co-operation with gardaí and the fact that prison will be harder for her as a foreign national.
She set a headline sentence of six years but reduced this to three years, taking mitigating factors into account. She backdated the sentence to when Carvalho went into custody last November.