A woman has told a Queensland jury she unwillingly acted as a courier for a $1.1 million drug deal because her family's lives had been threatened.
Thi Phuong Mai Nguyen, of Cabramatta in Sydney's southwest, has pleaded not guilty in Brisbane Supreme Court to one count of attempting to possess commercial quantities of an unlawfully imported border-controlled drug.
Nguyen, who was aged 48 when arrested in November 2019, also pleaded not guilty to one count of dealing with money intended to become an instrument of crime.
A joint operation by Australian Federal Police and counterparts in the Netherlands tricked a Dutch crime family into handing over 750 kilograms of MDMA, the active ingredient of ecstasy, on the pretext it would be smuggled into Brisbane.
The operation replaced the drugs with an inert substance and then tied them to an Australian syndicate, which then allegedly sent Nguyen to make the exchange.
While testifying in her own defence on Tuesday and Wednesday, Nguyen told the jury she had no choice in flying to Brisbane and acting as a driver for the deal after falling behind in repaying a loan to cover the gambling debts of a person close to her.
Nguyen said about a week before she departed for Brisbane on October 29, 2019 she was forced into a car outside her Sydney home by a Vietnamese man and two men of Middle Eastern appearance who could have been bikies.
"He said you f***ing listen to me - pay $50,000 now otherwise it goes up to $100,000," Nguyen testified.
When Nguyen told the men she could not pay, she said she was strangled, sexually assaulted, had a pistol pointed at her and was shown photos of her children at their school and a video call of her elderly relative in Vietnam in the company of an unknown man.
"I thought he was going to shoot me, it flashed through my mind," Nguyen testified.
"They said I would have to fish my (relative's) body out of the river."
Nguyen said the men gave her an encrypted mobile phone and told her to obey any instructions they texted.
Nguyen said she was ordered to retrieve a bag of $240,000 in cash hidden in a vacant lot and use it to purchase 150 kilograms of MDMA from a man outside a golf club in Brisbane's southeast.
The man turned out to be an undercover operative who called off the deal as he wanted to sell 350 kilograms of fake MDMA for $1.1 million.
Under cross examination by crown prosecutor Clare O'Connor, Nguyen said she was worried during her short stay in Brisbane but admitted texting a picture of herself lying on her hotel bed with the caption 'pig in mud', going shopping and out to dinner.
"You made up this story to avoid taking responsibility for the offences. What is your reaction to that?" Ms O'Connor said.
"No, I did not," Nguyen replied.
Ms O'Connor and Nguyen's defence barrister, Joshua Fenton, were due to give their closing statements on Thursday.
