New Zealand woman Sharon Armstrong has written a book after she was arrested as a drug mule and jailed for two and a half years in Argentina.

Seven years ago, the New Zealand public had little sympathy for drug mule Sharon Armstrong. Her claims she'd been duped by her online lover fell on deaf ears and few believed she was a witless victim of a romance scam.

Now, in her tell-all book, Organised Deception: My Story, Armstrong reveals a truth many may struggle to understand. A struggle because it all seems so unreal that even she admits it took years to comprehend what happened.

Armstrong takes us into a sinister hellhole where drug cartels exploit the vulnerabilities of ordinary people and turn them into unwitting drug mules. "I was not aware of the grooming that was occurring nor some of the warning signs, I now recognise and understand."

In April 2011, Armstrong's arrest photos were splashed across news outlets here and overseas. Customs officers had discovered a false bottom in her suitcase and, when they ripped it apart, they found five kilograms of cocaine. The haul had an estimated street value over $1 million.

SUPPLIED Armstrong on the day of her arrest. She says she's only recently forgiven herself.

Armstrong believed she was carrying documents for a business she was going to join with online boyfriend Frank when she met him in Europe. They'd never met in person during their six-month relationship, although she'd sent him thousands of dollars when he'd asked for money.

"The first I knew was when they lifted back that lining and I saw that there were three packages," Armstrong says. "As soon as I saw those three packages, I knew it wasn't documents.

"When they sliced into it and I saw there was a white powder and then they told me that they would test it, I just knew that it was going to be drugs.

It was Frank's idea for Armstrong to go to Buenos Aires en route to London. A one-night stopover turned into a week. She met Frank's colleague, a woman called Esperenza, who gave her the bag with the documents in it. Frank was in constant communication right up to check in at the airport. Armstrong knew there was a false bottom in the suitcase.

"I thought about [opening] it. But it was their key card that he played. 'You know honey if you're at all worried open it. Have a look.' At that point I thought oh f... what are you doing Sharon, you trust this man. If you lift that lining back you're going to find the documents and he's going to know you didn't actually trust him."

GRANT MATTHEW/STUFF Armstrong says New Zealand needs legislative change to protect Kiwis from scammers.

The airport arrest is where Armstrong says her shame began, a feeling she's nearly scrubbed from the pores of her skin, but not quite.

She writes: "During the period I was detained at the airport, each time I needed to go to the toilet I was handcuffed and had to walk across the customs control area through crowds of people. I kept my head down and didn't look around me. The first time I visited the toilet I wasn't allowed to close the door nor flush the bowl – they checked it after I had finished.

These indignities would happen over and over again to Armstrong as she moved from holding cells, to prison and the courts in Buenos Aires for two and a half years. Armstrong came to hate handcuffs, the sound and feel of them on her wrists.

Back in New Zealand, everyone was asking – how did a grandmother, an intelligent public servant become an international drug smuggler?

In the book, Armstrong has included journal entries she started a week after being arrested. She says it was her way of coping.

From the excerpts, you can read the shock and stress of what happened. Months after being arrested, Armstrong still believed Frank, the man she'd fallen in love with after meeting him on match.com, was a real person.

"God I really hate Frank and everything that knowing him has meant. I wonder if he has moved on to some other unsuspecting woman. What a creep!"

Armstrong now knows differently. In the book, Dr Peter Schaapveld, a clinical forensic psychologist familiar with romance scams, says Frank is not one person but probably a group of people working together.

He writes: "At any time many teams of scammers from a range of countries are trawling the internet, especially dating sites, targeting a plethora of people, seeking to hook those individuals who can be enticed into unwittingly undertaking tasks for the international drug-smuggling cartels."

He says in the book the methods used in romance scams are similar to the grooming techniques of sex offenders and are applicable to Sharon Armstrong's case.

GRANT MATTHEW/STUFF In her tell-all book, "Organised Deception: My Story," Armstrong decodes a situation many struggle to understand.

During her time in prison, Armstrong met many foreign women who'd also been jailed for drug smuggling, either knowingly or not.

Annika from Germany and Lee from Thailand were detained for drugs at the airport on the same day as Armstrong. Thai women were the largest number of foreigners she encountered in prison.

She met Mariel from the Philippines, Bella from Spain and Amanda from Guyana. There were unnamed women from Columbia; a mother and daughter from Paraguay, England and America; Becca from Spain; Kaye from Serbia and her girlfriend from Russia.

Schaapveld says it's a numbers game for international drug cartels. If one of their victims baulks and refuses to cooperate or gets caught, the cartels simply move onto the next carrier and so on.

"Of the other drug mule cases with which I am familiar, each has its own distinct elements of tragedy and in some instances horror.

SAM SACHDEVA The Federal Centre of Detention for Women in Ezeiza, Buenos Aires, where Armstrong was jailed.

He isn't surprised Armstrong didn't check the false bottom of her suitcase. Schaapveld says it was Frank's way of testing her. At that stage, he says Armstrong had no objectivity, was desperate to leave Argentina and, finally, meet the love of her life.

He writes in the book: "Sharon's case is typical because of the application of so many of the sophisticated psychological techniques used to deceive individual victims."

He says some techniques from her case can be likened to a hostage negotiation. He uses terms such as mind and behaviour manipulation, hypnosis and brainwashing.

"Once on the line the scammer will ramp up the pressure on the victim and will work so as to increase the distance between objective reality, increase dislocation and confusion, and increase the distance from the victim's support base."

Younger sister Leeanne Armstrong says in the book: "We watched Sharon become totally involved with this man and there were many ups in the beginning. However, she slowly became very withdrawn and totally consumed with the internet and her phone."

GRANT MATTHEW/STUFF Armstrong's arrest cost her family $80,000 to $100,000 in legal fees, prison expenses and travel.

In Armstrong's case, her family in Australia, where she was living at the time, had raised concerns about the online boyfriend. Although they'd talked to Frank on the phone, they were worried she'd never met him. They didn't know she was leaving for Argentina until the night before her departure.

The day she left they went to the police, who recommended calling Scamwatch in Australia. Armstrong contacted family members after she landed, so they felt some relief and kept in touch. But a week later, when Armstrong wasn't heard from after leaving for the airport, other family members called the New Zealand police, who then alerted Interpol.

When Armstrong finally spoke to the her family after being arrested, she says they were relieved. "There was never anything to forgive, they were just f...ing grateful I wasn't dead."

In the end, it cost the family $80,000 to $100,000 in legal fees, prison costs and travel. Armstrong says some whānau took out personal loans to help pay some of the bills. And she did receive donations, from children banking $10 into her account to a couple of anonymous cheques worth a few thousand dollars. "How do you thank people for that?" However, she still has a debt of $30,000 to pay back.

John McColl, a digital forensic analyst, became interested in Armstrong's story at the time of her arrest and decided to find evidence for her legal case pro bono. He also features in the book.

"I am used to seeing vulnerabilities in technical systems being exploited, but had never seen human emotion and general human vulnerabilities exploited to this extent."

The technological sophistication was staggering, even for the analyst. "Initially I was stunned to see the sheer volume of communications and the amount of effort the scammers were expending per victim, but as I did more research and probing I could see they are organised into teams, and use systems similar to the customer relationship management systems applied by legitimate companies, to manage the large number of potential victims they are communicating with simultaneously."

Armstrong hasn't included the transcripts McColl found on her computer in the book. She says they're too hard for her to read.

McColl believes more and more people will fall victim to this type of scam.

SUPPLIED Five kilograms of cocaine was found in a false bottom inside Armstrong's suitcase.

"I think it's hard to understand the levels of manipulation involved and the prolonged campaigns which are launched to break down and control victims which cannot just be summed up by saying they were stupid."



Armstrong is currently working with a family who believe their mother is in denial about being duped in a romance/investment scam. They've estimated the woman has given over $250,000 with an expectation she will make lots of money.

"We cannot break through her denial. We can't, we're stooping to dubious means of holding on to what money she's got left and giving it to her. It's just trying to get a break through."

Armstrong claims they have approached police twice. The first time they were told the victim needed to be present and were patronising, saying the fraud team only dealt with multimillion-dollar fraud. The second complaint was met with more empathy, but all they could do, as they do in every case, was inform the person of a potential scam and leave them a pamphlet.

Armstrong says New Zealand needs legislative change to protect Kiwis from scammers. In Australia, if banks notice unusual transactions that could be a potential scam, they notify the police. In turn, the police will correspond with the person involved and, if nothing is done, they visit them at home.

The police also work with customs. "They've been known to stop people at the airport," Armstrong says.

SAM SACHDEVA During her time in prison, Armstrong met many foreign women who'd also been jailed for drug smuggling, either knowingly or not.

It's for these reasons Sharon Armstrong says she needed to write the book, to raise awareness about romance scams and push for legislative change.

"I no longer think I'm stupid. I no longer think I'm dumb. I'm no longer embarrassed. It doesn't weigh me down like it did in those first few months of prison, where I felt like the whakamā [shame] was so bloody heavy I couldn't carry it."

She says too often victims of scams are made to feel they were the ones in the wrong, not the perpetrators.

STUFF New Zealand woman Sharon Armstrong reflects on why she wrote a book about her experience being arrested as a drug mule and spending two and a half years in an Argentina prison.

"It is not our shame. It lies purely with the corrupt scammers.

"I've written the book to raise what I think is a very serious issue and really I've just used my story as the background. I also hope it's a story of hope, a story of survival."

She isn't looking for sympathy, simply to educate the public – if an online scam can happen to her, it can happen to you.

Most won't experience the extreme romance scam Sharon Armstrong did, but her story is a warning to beware.

Armstrong is a guest speaker at the World Music Festival in New Plymouth on Saturday, March 17 on the Pinetum Stage at 7.30pm. For booking enquiries go to www.sharonarmstrong.org