The Malaysian Drug Trade

Drug syndicates are flooding Asia with record levels of meth, with Malaysia seemingly a key distribution hub. With the help of a drug-busting priest, R.AGE journalists started investigating the cases of young Malaysian mules locked up abroad, following the trail of information all the way to the top.

CHAPTER ONE: THE MALAYSIAN MULE

IN a crowded shopping mall in Kuala Lumpur, 16-year-old Shirley (not her real name) met with two men she had never seen before in her life. They gave her a flight ticket to Hong Kong, and RM2,000 in spending money.

A friend she had met on Facebook, 15 years old at the time, had arranged for the trip, telling her it was a free holiday. He had gone several times before, and even brought souvenirs back for her.

On the morning of her flight, one of the men showed up again and gave her and a fellow traveller a pair of shoes each. They were asked to wear them to Hong Kong.

Hours later, her life as she knew it was over. After arriving at Hong Kong International Airport, she was picked out for a body search, and 700g of heroin were found in the soles of the shoes.

For Shirley’s parents back in Malaysia, the nightmare was only just beginning. For nearly two months, they had no idea what had happened to her.

The last time they saw Shirley, their only child, she was begging them to let her go to Hong Kong with her friends. She was only supposed to be gone for three days.

Her parents searched everywhere - the airport, the police, hospitals - and found nothing. They couldn’t eat or sleep, and yet, as the owners of a small business in a small town, they had to continue working each day to survive.

And then came a phone call which gave them fear and relief in equal measure. It was from Hong Kong Correctional Services - their daughter was facing over 20 years in prison on drug trafficking charges.

Ever since that moment, Shirley’s parents have been working frantically and desperately to prove their daughter is innocent.

But Shirley is not alone. In the past year, nearly 30 young Malaysians - some still teenagers - have been arrested in Hong Kong for being drug mules on behalf of international syndicates; and experts say the arrest numbers are just a fraction of those that actually make it through.

With drug production in Southeast Asia’s infamous “Golden Triangle” region hitting record highs in the past year, the number of mules being recruited to transport drugs could grow even higher across Asia, and Malaysia - the region’s low-cost airline hub - appears to be the perfect transit country.

Drug syndicates operating in Malaysia have been using Facebook pages and WeChat groups with devastating effect, luring impressionable young people with “paid holidays” (like the one Shirley went for) or part-time courier jobs. Some openly say the job involves drugs.

If the mules get arrested, the syndicates usually get off scot-free, because almost all communications are done via fake profiles on chat apps which can’t be traced back to the recruiters.

After receiving a tip-off from a lawyer and a prison chaplain in Hong Kong, R.AGE journalists started investigating this increase in drug mule activity, and working with the families of the arrested mules to find out more about the syndicates.

Through its investigations in Malaysia and Hong Kong alone, the journalists were able to uncover syndicates who were sending mules to Vietnam, China, South Korea, Taiwan, the Middle East, Australia, Brazil and more.

The team then went undercover, posing as potential drug mules to meet with the syndicates’ recruiters, in hopes of exposing their tactics - which range from friendly recruitment, to brutal physical force.

Little did they know, their investigations would eventually expose a dangerous drug trafficking network, with connections to a major drug broker in Hong Kong.

But it all started with a series of prison visits.

Shirley, now nearly 18, told R.AGE her story from behind a glass panel at a Hong Kong prison which she has called home for around a year. She was supposed to be graduating high school this year.

Her Facebook page is full of photos of her and her school friends. None of them know what happened. Only her parents and a few close relatives were clued in.

“I told her not to go,” said Shirley’s mother, her voice trembling as she spoke from their home, in a small town two hours south of Kuala Lumpur.

Shirley now faces over 20 years in prison. Her parents are desperate to find evidence that could prove she knew nothing about the drugs.

They haven’t moved anything in Shirley’s room, the bigger of the two rooms in their home. It’s also the only one with a window, so the parents offered it to Shirley.

“She’s such a sweet child - her grandmother’s favourite, and popular with all her schoolmates - but she started mixing with these ‘friends’ on Facebook, and now they’ve ruined her life.

“She begged me to let her go with them. I felt bad because we never had the money to bring her for a holiday overseas, but I still said no. In the end, we just couldn’t stop her,” said the mother.

Her parents, too, had never been on a plane. Despite surviving on around just US$750 a month, they spent almost all their savings making two trips to see Shirley in Hong Kong, desperate to find evidence that could help her case before she is sentenced.

“I can’t sleep. I can’t eat. I just cry myself to sleep every night thinking about her,” said the mother.

“Just one trip - her first time on a plane,” said her father ruefully. “Look what it has done to us.”

Shirley has not heard from the 15-year-old friend who recruited her. He was on the same trip, but on an earlier flight. As far as she knows, he’s back in Malaysia, safe and sound.

Other mules tell us it’s a common diversionary tactic - keep the authorities busy with one or two arrests, while the majority pass through.

“I believe I was set up (to be arrested),” said Shirley. “I was the one to take the fall. Why else would they only plant 700g on me? That seems like a very small amount.”

Proving that in court, however, seemed an almost impossible task for her parents. The syndicate appeared to have burned all traces of their involvement.

Thankfully, help was about to arrive from an unlikely source.

CHAPTER TWO: THE DRUG-BUSTING PRIEST

In an incredibly small apartment overlooking Hong Kong’s infamous Temple Street, Australian missionary Father John Wotherspoon, 71, is working against time to help Shirley and other drug mules who he believes are innocent pawns in the drug syndicates’ evil game.

His apartment is just wide enough to fit a single bed, and long enough for a computer table, a pantry, a foldable dining table, and two shelves full of folders containing information on what he calls “the big fish” - suspected drug lords.

As we walk through Temple Street, nearly a dozen people – street vendors, homeless people, former drug addicts, current drug addicts – stop to greet him. He responds warmly in Cantonese.

After nearly 35 years of working with prison inmates, the poor, and the destitute, he has earned the respect of the community.

The past few years have seen him take on an altogether bigger challenge – dismantling drug trafficking syndicates in Hong Kong, all the way back to their source countries.

He has followed the trail of evidence provided by imprisoned drug mules to Columbia, Brazil, Tanzania, Kenya, China, Thailand, and more, where he conducts his own undercover operations to expose the big fish to local authorities.

And now, he has set his sights on Malaysia.

Over the past year, Wotherspoon has come across nearly 30 Malaysian drug mules in Hong Kong prisons, and he believes many more – like Shirley’s 15-year-old friend – slip through multiple times. Wotherspoon estimates only 10% of drug mules get caught, meaning that as many as 300 other young Malaysians could have already made “successful” drug runs to Hong Kong in the past year alone.

And that’s not including the thousands going to other countries. Over 430 Malaysian drug mules are currently in prison around the world according to police statistics, while the Foreign Affairs Ministry lists as many as 1,400 Malaysians incarcerated abroad on drug-related charges.

“I think it’s absolutely evil what these drug barons are doing. They recruit these innocent, impressionable young people who are desperate for money, and make them do their dirty work,” said Wotherspoon.

“While these young people end up in prison for over 20 years in some cases, these big fish get away with it. It’s just awful. And in some cases, they send the mules to countries with the death penalty - it’s like sending them to their deaths!”

Together with the journalists from R.AGE, Wotherspoon is working hard to help Shirley and the new glut of Malaysian mules being arrested in Hong Kong, “almost one every week”, according to Wotherspoon.

If he can find evidence that proves the mules were tricked or coerced into carrying the drugs, or help the mules provide enough information for authorities to make an arrest of a syndicate leader, it could shave years off their sentences and, at the same time put high-level drug traffickers behind bars.

It’s a mission that drives Wotherspoon to take some incredible risks, like walking straight into a well-known drug spot in Sao Paulo, Brazil to confront suspected Nigerian traffickers, or fishing for drug peddlers in China armed with hidden cameras.

“Here’s the audio recording of me being threatened by some (alleged) drug dealers,” he said, playing back the clip from one of his recording devices. It sounds harrowing even on playback, but Wotherspoon hardly flinches. He’s done more than his fair share of risky work around the world.

In Malaysia, he pieces together bits of information given to him by the mules in prison to track down their recruiters, waiting for them at their alleged hangouts, recruiting spots, or even homes, so he can confirm their identities and get Malaysian authorities to act.

If he can manage that, he just might be able to buy a few precious years of life back for the inmates. Some, like Shirley, might even walk free.

PRIEST UNDERCOVER
It’s Wotherspoon’s second trip to Malaysia. He has visited 18 families across the country - including Shirley’s - in less than three weeks, painstakingly collecting information and taking time to assure the families that there is hope.

Shirley’s parents have a conundrum. The full sentence Shirley’s facing is around 20-24 years in prison.

But Hong Kong law allows drug mules to have sentences reduced by one third if they plead guilty early on. Another third of the sentence is suspended for good behaviour, meaning it will only be activated if the prisoner does not behave.

So if she pleads guilty, she will be out in 7-8 years – provided she doesn’t get into trouble in prison. Plead not guilty, and she could face the full 20-24 years if she loses the case.

“But why should I plead guilty?” said Shirley, almost belligerently, when we asked how she planned to plea. “I didn’t do anything wrong! I didn’t know about the drugs!”

Shirley is only allowed one 10-minute phone call a month, something which her parents wait anxiously for every month.

“She’s always crying when she calls,” said the father. And she’s always asking if she should plead guilty.

It’s an impossible decision, especially for parents who are convinced their child is innocent, but have zero evidence. The months pass, and Shirley’s parents still don’t have an answer for her.

In the meantime, Wotherspoon gets to work finding that evidence. It’s time for him to go “fishing” – that’s when he tries to locate the drug lords and get a confession out of them, armed with nothing but a hidden camera and an almost reckless sense of optimism.

“They won’t do anything to an elderly man like me,” he said. “At least I don’t think so.” At his age, the work can be gruelling.

On this particular evening, he’s following a set of vague directions given to him by an inmate to locate an apartment block in a slightly infamous part of KL, where a Nigerian syndicate leader allegedly lives.

The address is incomplete. There is no block number, no unit number. All the inmate recalled was what floor the unit was on.

“No luck today,” he said, sighing. He had spent over four hours going up eight different apartment blocks, going to the floor he was told, and asking tenants if they recognised the alleged leader through an old photo. He got nothing.

At every point on these “fishing” operations, he risks having a target placed on him by syndicate members. He has been threatened with violence on several occasions.

Yet, he persists.

“Every time I get tired doing this, I close my eyes and picture these young mules in prison and their poor families, and I find the energy to keep working,” said Wotherspoon.

It helps that he has a healthy sense of humour, too. In one meeting with us, he says the number of drug mules arrested at airports is just “the tip of the iceberg”. He quickly follows up with: “That’s a meth joke, by the way. Get it? Ice-berg?”

But on this particular day in Kepong, having worked an entire day only to come back empty-handed, Wotherspoon is struggling to find a silver lining.

According to Wotherspoon, a judge had postponed the trial of a Malaysian mule to give him one last chance to locate the Nigerian dealer and prove the mule’s innocence.

“The real tragedy here is that I’ve given this information to the authorities in the past, but they did nothing. Nothing!

“That’s why I do this myself. I understand that the authorities have their procedures which take time, but I can’t wait anymore. There are prisoners back in Hong Kong who need this information in court.”

Today’s “fishing” operation might have been in vain, but there is some good news for Wotherspoon. A call comes in from the R.AGE headquarters – undercover journalists have just managed to establish contact with a few drug syndicate recruiters on social media.

Posing as potential mules, the journalists now plan to meet these recruiters, and see how far up the chain they can go.

CHAPTER THREE: THE STING

Our undercover journalist has been sitting at a coffee shop for about an hour, waiting for the recruiter to show up.

As with most undercover operations, it’s the wait that’s the most nerve-wracking. Things tend to fly by once the target arrives.

The journalist has already spoken to the target on the phone once, after contacting him via a job recruitment post on a Facebook page. We found dozens of similar posts across Facebook.

He gave vague details about a “high-earning job” she could do for him – in Hong Kong.

“But you will have to be brave,” he said via text. He’d explain more in person.

Finally, the recruiter arrives, along with a female friend. He looks like he’s in his late 20s, well-dressed in a white shirt and formal jeans, and is very candid – almost friendly.

Within two minutes, he tells our journalist what the job is really about.

“Bai fen,” he said, in Mandarin. The literal translation is “white powder”, a term used to describe drugs – heroin or cocaine, in particular.

“I’m being honest with you here,” he said, leaning in. “Most people in this ‘industry’ won’t tell you what it is you’re transporting.” A drug mule recruiter with a heart of gold, apparently.

She would have to fly into Hong Kong with the drugs hidden inside the lining of a special jacket, which he claims is designed to avoid detection by customs officers. If she makes it, she’ll be paid around RM13,000.

“If you agree to do this, my boss will arrange everything else,” he said.

He claims to have never met his boss. All communications are done via messaging apps. From our conversations with other mules, we know they are usually instructed via text to go to a cheap hotel. Suddenly, a few men will show up to strap the drugs on, just hours before the flight, so you don’t have a chance to back out.

“But, you will have to give my boss your home address, the names of your family members, and their home addresses as well,” he said ominously. It’s how they make sure you complete the job.

Simon, another young mule currently in prison in Hong Kong, faced similar threats. He recalled the sinking feeling he had when the men showed up at the hotel.

“I didn’t know I was supposed to carry drugs. I was told I just needed to follow a bunch of people to Hong Kong, and I would get paid for it.

“But when they started strapping the packages to my legs, I immediately knew what they were,” he said, also from behind a glass panel in prison.

“But I didn’t dare back out. I was afraid. The men were really menacing.”

He started saving screenshots of the WeChat messages he received from his recruiter, which he frantically forwarded to his girlfriend.

But with so little time left, there was nothing she could do. Simon was on a flight to Hong Kong just a few hours later, and in custody before he even left the airport. Not long after, his girlfriend received a few threatening phone calls.

“I don’t know any of (the recruiters’) names, but I would recognise their faces,” he said. “But I’m not sure how far we can go with this – I’m afraid of what they’ll do to my family.”

The threats certainly worked. Simon’s girlfriend is too afraid to do anything, or even speak to the police. She and her children just have to find a way to move on, and hope Simon is released in 7-8 years.

For others, just the thought of taking on these syndicates is scary.

“They could burn down our house, or follow us on our way to work,” said Shirley’s parents.

Simon, too, accepts that there’s little he can do but accept his fate. “I was stupid enough to fall for the scam, so I’ll plead guilty and do my time. Just please ask my family to send me photos of my girlfriend and children,” he said, in tears. He asked this of us several times in the 10 minutes we had together.

Back at the coffee shop, our journalist asks the recruiter how risky the job really is.

Again, the recruiter is honest.

“In Hong Kong, your chances are 50-50. Many Malaysians have been arrested there,” he said.

“If you aren’t really desperate for money, my advice is you don’t do it. If you’re caught in Hong Kong, you could go to jail for over 20 years. In China, you get the death penalty. There are other jobs you can do for me.”

The other jobs are mainly credit card scams. But that’s a story for another day.

After about an hour of friendly conversation, the recruiter takes his leave. Despite showing concern, he never really closes the door on sending our undercover girl on a drug run.

Taking action against drug syndicate recruiters like the one we met poses a unique legal challenge for the police. As low-level recruiters, it’s highly unlikely they will be caught in possession of drugs.

And since most of the mules will only communicate with a syndicate organiser through messaging apps like WeChat, where account IDs can’t be traced to anyone, the police rarely have enough evidence for a case to stick in court.

That’s where the controversial Dangerous Drugs (Special Preventive Measures) Act 1985 comes in. It’s a law in Malaysia that allows police to detain – without a warrant – anyone suspected of drug trafficking for up to two years.

And as long as the Home Minister approves, the two-year term can be renewed, meaning suspects can essentially be detained indefinitely.

According to criminal lawyer Kitson Foong, who has worked on such cases, all it takes is signed affidavits from two witnesses saying that the suspect is involved in drug trafficking. The suspect then becomes a person of interest, gets investigated, and can be detained even if they don’t have any drugs in their possession.

There are, of course, ethical concerns with such a law. Foong says it can be abused by the syndicates themselves to “take out” their competitors, for example.

“Police will say they need (the Act), because they have to cut off the head of the snake,” said Foong. Arresting low-level recruiters and mules doesn’t make much of a difference.

“But unfortunately, it’s all about demand and supply. You cut off one head, another one will come up.”

CHAPTER FOUR: THE GOLDEN TRIANGLE

OVER 2,000km north of Kuala Lumpur lies the idyllic Golden Triangle, a point where the borders of Myanmar, Thailand and Laos converge. It is also one of the busiest drug-producing regions in the world, churning out an illegal trade worth tens of billions of dollars annually.

The heart of that booming trade is on the Myanmar side of the Triangle, in Shan State, which was once the world’s largest producer of heroin for decades through its vast opium poppy farms, until Afghanistan surpassed it in the 1990s.

Nevertheless, drug syndicates in the Golden Triangle have continued largely unimpeded, operating amidst the long-running conflict between ethnic militias and the Myanmar army, the Tatmadaw.

And then came a game-changer - methamphetamines, aka meth.

A few years ago, the syndicates started swapping their opium poppy farms for sophisticated synthetic drug labs.

And now, they are flooding the region - often through mules - with record amounts of dangerous meth, creating a drug crisis which authorities seem powerless to stop.

In Malaysia, 4.4 tonnes of meth were seized in 2018 - more than the combined total of the previous four years. We don’t have statistics for 2019 yet, but Malaysian police have already made one record-breaking bust of 2.06 tonnes in March.

Similarly, in Thailand, an International Crisis Group (ICG) report says meth seizures in the first half of 2018 reached 15 tonnes - triple the entire 2017 haul.

While some might see these large seizures as wins for law enforcement, the ICG report cautions otherwise. Despite the massive seizures, street prices for meth have remained stable, which means there’s still plenty of the product out in the market. The seizures have hardly made a dent.

“Street prices have actually been dropping!” added Inshik Shim, a regional drug analyst at the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).

“In many countries, the price for meth and yaba (a pill-based version of meth mixed with caffeine) has been decreasing.”

And it’s not just Malaysia: Myanmar-made meth has been found as far as Australia, South Korea, Taiwan, and New Zealand. Higher street prices in these markets are a huge motivating factor for syndicates to send mules.

But the amount flowing from Malaysia to Hong Kong now is particularly worrying.

R.AGE brought its findings to the Malaysian police’s narcotics division, informing them that 23 drug mules had been arrested in the preceding nine months.

A senior officer, DCP Zulkifli Ali, was shocked. Official police statistics showed only 10 such arrests in Hong Kong over the past five years.

It would turn out to be a major turning point in Father John Wotherspoon’s crusade against the syndicates. Zulkifli tasked his team to immediately look into the matter, and to meet with this drug-busting priest R.AGE had told him about.

“It is very important that we fight this, this war on drugs, to the maximum,” he said.

“When our current Prime Minister (Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad) first took office in 1981, he regarded drugs as public enemy number one - and it is still the same today. Drugs are still our number one enemy.”

Unfortunately, communications between law enforcement across multiple countries can be difficult. It’s easier if it’s police-to-police, but when it’s between the customs department in Hong Kong (which makes arrests at the airport) and Malaysian police, for example, information-sharing becomes complicated.

Drug syndicates are all too happy to take advantage of this lack of communication, which often means cases are not followed up on back in the country of origin.

The main problem, however, lies at the source.

“As long as drugs are being produced in the Golden Triangle, we will face challenges,” admitted Zulkifli.

“Malaysia is being used as a transit or hub country because of our proximity to the producing area.

“You stop one syndicate, another will come up. As long as there is (drug) production, trafficking will continue.”

Indeed, Malaysia’s strategic location in the middle of South-East Asia - not to mention its low-cost airline hub - makes it an ideal transit country for the region’s syndicates.

Hong Kong, similarly, is a convenient transit point for much of East Asia.

Airports in the Middle East are also known to be handover points. Packages from South America, for example, are sometimes handed over here to mules from Malaysia, who are then told to carry them on to a second destination in Asia.

That’s exactly what happened with Nades*.

When he was 23, a friend offered him a job. All he had to do was fly to the Middle East, collect a package from someone in the airport, and fly on to Hong Kong. He would be paid US$200.

Everything was coordinated by his friend’s brother, based in Malaysia. All he had to do was follow instructions that would be sent through a chat app.

When he arrived at the first airport (he claims he doesn’t recall exactly where, probably Doha or Dubai), an African man passed him a package, which appeared to contain chocolates.

And when he arrived in Hong Kong, he had that heart-stopping moment all arrested mules go through - when the customs officers stop them. They found 1.35kg of cocaine in the chocolates.

So why did Nades do it?

“It was Christmas, I had just quit my job, and I needed some money for the holidays,” he said. “I’m not the smartest person,” he admitted. Like many of the other mules, he was a high-school dropout.

And just as it was with Shirley's case, the “friend” that recruited him - and was on the very same flight - made it back safely to Malaysia.

Nades would spend the next two-and-a-half years in prison trying to prove he didn’t know about the drugs in the chocolates.

Back home, his mother’s health was failing. The family did not have money to hire a lawyer. There was no one to investigate his case back in Malaysia, at least not without getting in trouble with the syndicate.

Even though he knew exactly who recruited him and where to find him, it seemed like there was nothing he could do.

Just when all hope seemed lost for Nades, just when it seemed like he would never see his mother alive again, Father John Wotherspoon came into the picture.

CHAPTER FIVE: THE DRUG LORD

Father John Wotherspoon has spent the past few months connecting the dots between over two dozen Malaysian drug mules.

The cases came from different cities and countries, but when Wotherspoon started asking about the mules’ recruiters, many seemed to trace back to the same person – a drug lord named Shanker*.

The way Shanker’s gang operates is simple: the senior members recruit impressionable young men and women to carry innocuous-looking packages across borders – as far as Brazil – and promise a generous fee in return. Of course, the packages are lined with drugs, something many of the mules are not aware of.

Mules who have proven reliable, who have made several trips and seem wise to the true nature of the entire operation, are then trusted to become recruiters themselves – and paid handsomely for each new recruit. It’s multi-level marketing for drugs.

Many syndicates use a similar model. Recruiting dozens of “dispensable” mules to traffic small amounts of drugs is less risky than moving big shipments of several tonnes, where each foiled attempt could cost millions in street value.

With mules, the syndicates can also improve their chances of success by setting up one or two mules – usually carrying smaller amounts – to get caught on each trip, distracting authorities enough for the majority to slip through.

“Drug traffickers are happy to give up some mules to keep the authorities happy,” said British lawyer Michael Vidler, who has been practicing in Hong Kong for over 25 years, focusing on human rights. He has worked on drug mule cases as well.

“The syndicates don’t care – it’s part of their business model. Even if, say, one out of eight mules get through, they’re still making money.

“The police are motivated more by high (arrest) numbers than the ‘quality’ of arrests. We have to get the people at the top, not just the drug mules.

“You have kingpins organising millions in drugs who aren’t being nabbed, while drug mules are getting 30 years in prison.”

Getting to the people at the top, however, is a huge challenge.

One of Shanker’s victims, a young man who was too afraid to speak in person, said he was lucky to have discovered the hidden drugs in the parcel of “documents” Shanker had sent him to collect in Sao Paulo.

Horrified, he threw the drugs away at the airport and bought his own return ticket. Had he been caught at the delivery point in Malaysia, he would have faced the death penalty.

Shanker decided to teach him a lesson for dumping the drugs, and sent a gang of thugs to beat him up. If that wasn’t enough to silence him, the continued death threats via text message certainly were.

Now, he feels lucky to be alive, and wants to put the whole episode behind him.

As Wotherspoon continued looking into the syndicate, he found even more shocking stories. Shanker’s recruiters are said to have sent out over 100 mules, and have left many to rot in prisons overseas when they are caught.

According to Wotherspoon, Shanker’s syndicate is working with a Nigerian trafficker in Hong Kong.

“He goes by a few different names, and he is one of the masterminds here in Hong Kong who’s orchestrating the recruitment of drug mules in Malaysia,” he said.

Wotherspoon hopes to use information about Shanker and the Nigerian’s network to help Nades’ case in court.

After over two years in prison waiting for his case to be heard, Nades was about to go to trial soon. Time was ticking.

Nades said he passed all the information he had to the Malaysian Consulate in Hong Kong, including the names of his recruiters, hoping for the authorities to take action.

“I have spoken to the consulate so many times about this my mouth has run dry,” he said. “But nothing happened.”

Wotherspoon, however, received a lucky break.

One of Shanker’s recruiters, Arwind, still only 23, wanted to come clean and expose his boss.

Despite being a recruiter, Arwind claimed he didn’t know he was recruiting drug mules.

He had met Shanker at a wedding. Upon hearing that Arwind was jobless at the time, Shanker offered him a job as a courier. He would get paid to travel to South America and Hong Kong – all he had to do was deliver a package along the way.

“Shanker’s way was to tell people they are transporting documents. It’s just documents in the bag, and you transfer it to Hong Kong,” he said.

Do the other mules know they are carrying drugs?

“No. They just know that there are documents in the bag. That’s Shanker’s approach.”

Arwind said he was rejected for the South America trip because there was some unknown issue when they tried to book his flight. He got into an argument with Shanker, who then decided to send Arwind’s sister instead.

From then on, Arwind acted as a recruiter under his sister, who seemed to have gained Shanker’s trust, and would reportedly go on to work directly with the Nigerian in Hong Kong.

Arwind claims he only ever recruited two people, and finally realised the true nature of the business when one of them was arrested in Hong Kong.

He later heard that over 30 of Shanker’s drug mules have been arrested overseas. He also heard that syndicates like to recruit Malaysians because their passports are very “powerful” – they get visa-free entry in many countries.

Vidler adds that the growing number of middle class Malaysian tourists and business travellers helps avoid suspicion among customs officers too.

“The only way to stop this is to catch Shanker,” claimed Arwind.

“But he is a very dangerous person. He can go to any extreme level.

“If he finds out what we are doing, he could do something to my life.”

THE FINAL CHAPTER: THE FIGHT BACK

“I don’t think there’s any need to be afraid,” said the young lady sitting across the table. “It’s because of fear that no one dares to stand up, and more and more people become victims.”

Jennifer* is determined to bring to justice the drug syndicate leaders who recruited her brother, Simon, as a drug mule.

“Every time I visit my brother or receive his letters, I feel so heartbroken. He’s not a bad person, just very naive, and now his future is ruined while these ‘friends’ who recruited him are out there enjoying life,” she said.

“But this isn’t just about my brother. If we don’t do something, these syndicates will continue ruining the lives of so many other families.”

Jennifer is just one of several family members of imprisoned Malaysian drug mules who are helping Father John Wotherspoon’s campaign.

This unlikely alliance of families, mostly from lower-income communities, are now ready to speak up against the syndicates who have been using Malaysian mules to help flood the region with unprecedented amounts of synthetic drugs.

Aided by Wotherspoon, the families are exchanging notes and piecing together evidence against the syndicates, slowly but surely.

The syndicates have always counted on being able to isolate and intimidate families into staying silent – but not this time.

“We want to create a support group for these families, and hopefully work with them to help the authorities take action. That could help the mules’ cases in Hong Kong too,” said Wotherspoon.

Jennifer has been investigating her brother’s case on her own, and despite having a regular day job, has amassed an impressive amount of information.

“My brother had been missing for a few months, and we didn’t know what had happened to him. I called his girlfriend, but she kept ignoring my calls.

“When she finally picked up, she pretended to be someone else, so I said I was going to make a police report. That’s when she came clean,” said Jennifer.

That’s how Jennifer finally learned that her brother was in prison on drug trafficking charges, and that his girlfriend had been threatened by the syndicates to stay silent.

Simon had sent his girlfriend a flurry of WeChat screenshots of his conversations with the recruiters, seemingly alarmed after learning that he was being used to traffic drugs for them.

Using the names and pictures contained in the screenshots, Jennifer was able to identify a list of suspects.

“One of them, who seems to be the boss, happens to have been from the same secondary school Simon and I went to.

“I asked my former schoolmates about him, and they were all too afraid to say much,” she said.

But Jennifer is not afraid. She is ready to pass on all the information to the authorities – names, phone numbers, photos, etc.

“I found some of (the recruiters) on Facebook, and these guys are in their 20s and 30s, going to clubs every night, surrounding themselves with beautiful girls and giving them branded gifts.

“It just makes me so angry, because they have destroyed so many innocent lives. My brother says some of those with him in prison are as young as 18! These are kids who don’t know how to think for themselves,” she said, welling up in anger.

The family of another mule, Dinesh, is also pushing back.

Dinesh’s elderly father was so desperate that he confronted his son’s recruiter in person. He found him at the restaurant next to his son’s college, still recruiting students.

The recruiter appeared to be backed by a local gang. But Dinesh’s father was determined.

“I told him he must come with me to the police, and tell them that he did this to my son, so we can bring him back,” he said.

Seemingly moved by the father’s bravery, the recruiter agreed to go to the Malaysian police headquarters to give a statement, and provide some form of testimony for Dinesh’s trial in Hong Kong.

A lawyer offered to help with the process, and the father, a former lorry driver, used almost his entire retirement fund to pay for his services.

Over a year passed, and all he got was a single written testimony, one which we were told would hardly stand in court.

The father now suspects the lawyer - who has now cut off all contact with them - was working with the recruiter the entire time, leaving his family in dire financial straits.

Dinesh has been in prison for over two years now, and the time apart is taking a toll on his father.

“He is such a loving person, a loving son to us. There’s nothing bad I can say about him,” said the father.

“And he was always a good student – he got straight As in his secondary school exams, and he was one of the top students in college too.

“If he is convicted, for sure it will be the end of me. I will drink poison and die. If he gets over 20 years (in prison), I will leave this earth.”

Shirley’s parents too, are doing whatever they can to track down the teenager who recruited their daughter, and have joined the alliance of families providing information to the police.

But then came a major breakthrough, thanks to Wotherspoon’s tireless work visiting and counselling mules back in Hong Kong.

Before his trip to Malaysia, he met with Sharon, one of the latest Malaysian mules to land in a Hong Kong prison.

Sharon, a single mother desperate for money, had taken up Arwind’s offer of a job with his “licensed courier company”. She flew to Hong Kong to meet Shanker’s boss, who then sent her to another South-East Asian country to bring a bag back to Hong Kong. That’s when she was arrested.

But Sharon’s brother, Thinesh, was determined to blow everything wide open. Enraged, he started tracking down the families of other drug mules sent by Shanker’s network, to gather evidence.

During his last trip in Malaysia, Wotherspoon travelled several hours to meet with Thinesh and to help him connect the dots with all the other families.

By then, Thinesh had managed to get enough information to get the local authorities’ attention, despite threats against his life.

He claims he was ambushed by a group of men when he was following up on a lead in Shanker’s hometown, and barely escaped with his life. He believes Shanker had paid a gang to have him killed.

“A lot of gangsters came to meet me and threaten me, but I’m not scared of them, because I have the evidence,” said Thinesh resolutely. Now, he also has narcotics officers on his side.

With corroborative intel from Wotherspoon also passed on to the police thanks to DCP Zulkifli Ali’s help, the puzzle was finally complete.

In February 2019, Shanker was detained under the Special Preventive Measures. Narcotics officers showed up at his home, and took him in.

It set off a chain reaction – police were able to round up several of his associates, and more are expected to be detained soon.

Even though it seems Shanker’s syndicate will soon be all but dismantled, there’s not much for the families to celebrate just yet.

There’s no guarantee that his arrest will be able to help the mules in court, and for most of them, going to trial alone will take over two years – that’s how many drug mule cases are pending in Hong Kong now.

“The police in Malaysia told me that whatever we need, whatever evidence or paperwork, they will give it to us,” said Thinesh, his work now almost done.

“They promised they will work with the Hong Kong government. I don’t know how they’re going to do it. I have nothing left to do but wait for good news from them.”

Jennifer still doesn’t have quite enough evidence to bring her brother’s recruiter to justice, and it appears the only way that will happen now is if other witnesses come forward.

The man responsible for recruiting Dinesh was also detained earlier in a separate operation, but despite Dinesh’s family’s best efforts, they have still been unable to get a testimony from him.

They’re getting help from Lawyer Sangeet Kaur Deo, daughter of the late Malaysian politician Karpal Singh. She has offered to advise all the mules’ families pro bono.

As for Shirley’s parents, the teenage recruiter who made their daughter a drug mule is still at large.

In the end, the only consolation for them is that Shirleydecided not to risk going to trial, and to plead guilty. They will be able to hold her in their arms again in 7-8 years.

“But a lot can happen in 7-8 years,” said her father. “Who knows? I could be dead by then.”

Back in Hong Kong, Wotherspoon was initially thrilled that no new Malaysian mules had been caught there in the months after Shanker’s arrest. But then last month, two Malaysian mules showed up.

At the very least, there was one happy ending.

THE HAPPY ENDING

After over two-and-a-half years in prison, Nades he mule who was sent to the Middle East and Hong Kong (read Chapter Four), finally had his day in court. Wotherspoon was scheduled to provide testimony on his behalf later in the week.

Ever since they first met in prison, Wotherspoon has been trying to help Nades, convinced that he was an innocent pawn of the drug syndicates. They spoke regularly during Wotherspoon’s prison visits, and Wotherspoon had spent many months trying to get evidence that could help Nades’ case.

But remarkably, the trial didn’t even last long enough for Wotherspoon’s testimony. According to Wotherspoon, the judge decided to cut the trial short, reminding the jury that there was no evidence Nades had ever touched the drugs hidden in his package of chocolates, putting it to them to make a decision.

That very day, in July 2018, the jury decided that Nades was innocent, and he was freed. Wotherspoon said he had never seen anything like it in all his years in court. “It’s a miracle,” he said.

Nades sspent the next few days at a temporary holding facility, and was on the next available flight back to Malaysia.

He was finally able to see his mother again.

“She picked me up at the airport. She immediately broke down in tears,” recalled Nades. Even now, it’s too emotional for Nades to talk about.

Three months later, she finally succumbed to her illness, and passed away.

Fast forward to January 2019. Wotherspoon is nearing the end of his drug-busting expedition in Malaysia, but he can’t leave without seeing Nades. He was acquitted and sent back to Malaysia so suddenly that they never had a chance to say goodbye.

We drove Wotherspoon to the small town about an hour from Kuala Lumpur where Nades is trying to rebuild his life.

We meet at a small, dusty road-side restaurant. It is the first time Wotherspoon has seen Nades as a free man. They immediately embrace each other.

As we sit down for a meal, Wotherspoon brings out his file on Nades, which he can now put back on the shelf at his tiny apartment in Temple Street.

“Do you remember this?” said Wotherspoon, pointing at a number scribbled at the top of the file.

Nades doesn’t even take a look. “17***-**,” he said confidently. “I will never forget my inmate number.”

Nades has found a job working at a factory. It’s hard work, for very little money, but an ex-prisoner doesn’t exactly have options.

“I was very happy when the case was dismissed, but honestly, sometimes things are easier in prison than they are out here,” he said.

Did he try to call the friend who recruited him?

“I did call him, and I think he didn’t recognise my number, so he picked up. I said I wanted to speak to his brother, the leader of the gang. He said he would arrange it.

“But I’ve never heard from him since, and he has stopped taking my calls,” he said.

We asked if he’s afraid they will come after him, now that he’s back in Malaysia.

“I’m not afraid, because these guys are cowards,” he said.

In fact, he is ready to testify against them if it could help his cellmate in Hong Kong – Dinesh, whose father is still waiting anxiously for his case to be heard.

“They are all cowards. They don’t dare to do the dirty work themselves, so they keep getting young people to do it.

“I will do anything you need me to, as long as it can help Dinesh,” he added.

Before we leave, Wotherspoon gives Nades an envelope of money, to help him get back on his feet. He is reluctant to accept.

“Don’t worry, it’s a donation, from people who support our work,” said Wotherspoon.

Nades takes the money, they embrace again, and we drove Wotherspoon back to his hotel in Kuala Lumpur. Hopefully, it won’t be the last time they meet, as Nades’ testimony could be crucial in Dinesh’s case.

But for now, Wotherspoon is basking in a rare moment of joy amidst all the destruction wrecked by the drug syndicates.

“It really is such a great feeling, seeing one of them outside of prison. Just wonderful.”