A Texan cocaine smuggler, caught with £100,000 worth of the drug at Gatwick Airport, will have an extra nine months slashed from her sentence and be given £1,500 and a free flight home because she is an American citizen.
Andrea Dee Crossen, 46, told the UK Border Agency (UKBA) she was in London to receive a £25m gift from her millionaire husband, but her "fantastical account" was exposed as an elaborate lie concocted to try and convince officers she was not a cocaine courier.
The ex-hospital worker was sentenced to four-and-a-half years imprisonment, but will be flying home next summer under a UKBA initiative for non-EU citizens who receive over three years.
There is no reciprocal arrangement for United Kingdom citizens imprisoned in the United States.
"Being a US national she will be offered the early release scheme," prosecutor Miss Barbara Down told Croydon Crown Court. "Nine months will be taken off her sentence, she will have a paid flight home and be given fifteen hundred pounds so that when she gets home it helps her to settle down."
The nine months will be an additional discount to the 50%, which is automatically deducted from all prison sentences.
Single-mum Crossen, of Waterside Court, Addison, Dallas pleaded guilty to importing two kilos of 19% pure cocaine from Trinidad on December 30, last year.
The court heard she has an addiction to powerful prescription painkillers and receives £900 per month in disability income.
"She was intercepted in the immigration area after stepping off a British Airways flight and during a search of her baggage a quantity of white powder was found in the lining of her rucksack," explained Miss Down. "It tested positive for cocaine.
"During a lengthy interview she said she had come to met her husband and had no idea there were any drugs in the bag.
"She said her husband was a multi-millionaire who owned gold mines and she had come to the UK to sign bank papers for a twenty-five million dollar cheque, which her husband had given to her as a present, and she did not need to smuggle drugs."
Crossen suggested the cocaine must have been planted by either her bodyguard or personal assistant in Trinidad, who had been hired by her husband to take care of her during a short vacation to the Caribbean island.
"It is a fantastical account that she gives," said Miss Down, explaining CCTV footage showed Crossen's final destination, a Birmingham hotel room, had been paid for in cash by a mystery black male.
"She said she married in Dallas three years ago and had not seen her husband, who was living in a Malaysian hotel, for over a year, but they planned to meet in Birmingham and he had also bought her a London house."
However, she could not recall her husband's date of birth and estimated his age at thirty-seven years old.
"The entire account is fanciful, there is no husband," said Miss Down of the first-time offender. "She also had an exceptionally large quantity of painkillers that she said she had taken for many years and said were prescribed to her."
Crossen's lawyer Miss Mariska Van Leeuwen told the court: "She was certainly vulnerable and gullible and cannot easily distinguish between fantasy and reality. She does live in a fantasy land."
Her son had flown in from the USA and visited her in prison four days before she was sentenced.
"She is very vulnerable and she just seemed to have gone along with this and not given it much thought.
"She is registered disabled since an accident at work ten years ago and has become addicted to painkillers and is in long-term pain."
Judge Jeremy Gold QC told Crossen: "I am prepared to accept you are a vulnerable woman and you put forward a completely eccentric account of your life in interview."
A book keeper - employed by an
internationally-renouned art and history picture library - who was
arrested and charged with diverting ten of thousands of pounds into
her bank account, has dodged jail with a suspended sentence.
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