Grandmother Avoids Death Sentence After Being Charged With Trafficking Meth

An Australian grandmother Wednesday avoided the death penalty in Malaysia Wednesday after being found not guilty of drug trafficking.

Maria Elvira Pinto Exposto, 54, was caught in December 2014 carrying more than two pounds of crystal methamphetamine through Kuala Lumpur International Airport. Exposto told the court that she was unaware she was carrying drugs and was tricked into an elaborate online scheme where she fell in love with a fake person.

Drug trafficking charges in Malaysia come with a mandatory death sentence carried out by hanging. Anyone caught with 1.75 ounces of a drug can find themselves charged with trafficking.

Exposto met a person online claiming to be “Captain Daniel Smith,” who said he was a U.S. soldier based in Afghanistan. Exposto talked to the online persona for around a year and appeared to have fallen in love with him. She was then lured to China under the guise of meeting “Smith.” In China, she was given a bag from a stranger and asked to bring it back to Australia to help “Smith.” Inside the lining of the bag was the drugs.

“When she was in Australia, Maria developed an online relationship with someone who she thought and perceived to be a captain in US army, stationed in Afghanistan,” Farhan Shafee, a lawyer for Exposto, told the Guardian.“This relationship developed for [about] a year, and during that time she’d given money to this online presence, believing that once he was discharged from the military they would be united and live happy ever after together in Australia.”

The drugs were found when Exposto went through immigration and was searched, a step she did not need to take as a passthrough traveler.

“The judge described her as naive, not merely innocent but naive,” Exposto’s lawyer Muhammad Shafee Abdullah told reporters Wednesday. “But because she was not a trafficker - she was an innocent carrier tricked into carrying a bag - she did all these innocent things.”

Since Exposto voluntarily opted to give her bags up for a search by customs, the judge believed she was unaware of being in possession of drugs.

“I agreed with the defense's argument that the accused had no knowledge of the drugs that were in her bag,” said Justice Dato Ghazali who presided over the case, according to the BBC. “I believe that at that time her feelings of love towards 'Captain Daniel Smith' overcame everything, including her own husband, her family and her future.”

Exposto, who is from Sydney, will not be able to return to Australia as prosecutors are appealing the verdict.