The US Drug Enforcement Agency reportedly alerted Colombian authorities to their suspicions about Australian woman Cassandra Sainsbury, as authorities reveal her plane ticket was purchased in Hong Kong.
Ms Sainsbury, 22, was arrested at El Dorado International Airport in Bogota on April 12 after a tip-off about the 5.8kg of cocaine allegedly hidden inside 18 headphone boxes in her suitcase.
"We found her because of an alert from the DEA," Bogota airport's narcotics chief, Commander Rodrigo Soler, told The Australian.
He said she had cleared security and checked her bag when the alert came up.
"The alert said check this person so we pulled her aside and we searched her luggage and we arrested her. We asked 'is this your bag, did you pack this?'. She said 'yes'."
Mr Soler told the newspaper Ms Sainsbury's ticket, which was bought by an unknown party in Hong Kong, was one of several red flags that caused North American agencies to alert Colombian police.
The Adelaide woman's family insists she is innocent and was set up by a Colombian man she met after arriving in the South American country on April 3 during a working holiday.
They say she bought the headphones from him to give as gifts to family and friends at her upcoming wedding. He told her he could get “a really good price” for 16 or 18 sets of headphones, her mother said.
Her mother admitted her daughter had been “naïve” with the packages she was given, after not “rip[ping] it open to make sure it was headphones in there”.
Yesterday, the first photographs of Ms Sainsbury since her arrest emerged, showing her handcuffed and standing beside her luggage and 18 packages wrapped in black plastic.
The ports and airports director for Colombia’s anti-narcotic police, George Mendoza, said the Adelaide woman “could possibly be a drug mule”.
“In going through security we found she had 18 packets inside her luggage which even before opening it we found covered in plastic,” Mr Mendoza told ABC radio through an interpreter.
Mr Mendoza noted that per capita, Australians are among the biggest users of cocaine in the world. A UN report in 2013 found Australians were the world's eighth highest per capital users of the drug.
Others have questioned Ms Sainsbury’s presence in Colombia, pointing out the country doesn’t offer working holiday visas to Australians.
Ms Sainsbury’s mother said a lawyer had advised her daughter to plead guilty to avoid a potential jail sentence of between 18 and 25 years.
It’s reported the sentence could be reduced to four years if she provides information about the man who allegedly gave her the drugs.
The Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade says it is providing assistance to an Australian woman arrested in Colombia, but offered no further details due to privacy