Precious Chineme Nwoko, 25, has had his hope for reprieve dashed. Nwoko, also known as Precious Max and linked with several Australian women arrested for being his mules, was sentenced to 27 years imprisonment in 2014. .
His hope for reprieve was dashed by a Cambodian appeals court on Tuesday. The court upheld his prison term. The court also upheld the prison terms slammed on Australian, Ann Yoshe Taylor, 43. The duo were all convicted for trying to smuggle heroin to Australia. .
The lower court had sentenced Taylor to 23 years and Nwoko to 27 years. Savarino and Taylor were arrested in September 2013 after police found 2.2kg of heroin in Taylor’s luggage as they prepared to fly together to Australia. .
Nwoko, Savarino’s boyfriend, was believed to have masterminded the smuggling. Asked today by journalists why he used dating scams to turn women into drug mules, Nwoko became enraged, according to a report by Australia’s Sydney Morning Herald .
“Are you stupid? Get out of here. You think you can come here and ask questions while I am jail,” he shouted at Luke McMahon, a Melbourne writer who has revealed Taylor’s plight in an exclusive story for Fairfax Media.
Nwoko, who is known as Precious Max, had posed as a successful South African businessman when he befriended Taylor on the internet. He later paid for her airfare to Cambodia. .
On September 18, 2013, Nwoko asked Taylor, who was due to fly back to Australia, to take a backpack full of samples for an arts and crafts business in which he claimed to have an involvement.
She hadn’t made it to the check-in counter when police swooped and found heroin in the backpack. Nwoko was arrested soon after. .
Australian police are investigating a growing number of internet scams targeting Australians in south-east Asian countries, including Cambodia, where Nwoko is believed to be still operating scams, from his jail cell, targeting Australian women.
