Romance Scam: Last chance for Donna Nelson

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Seemingly tricked into smuggling two kilograms of methamphetamine into Japan, Donna Nelson's fate hangs in the hands of a Japanese court.

I'm Stephen Stockwell.

Welcome to the case of the romance scam.

Since her arrest in early January 2023, Donna Nelson and her family have been living a nightmare.

Two kilograms of methamphetamine were found in the lining of a suitcase that she took to Japan.

Her family has always maintained she was conned into traveling into Asia by a man met online two years prior.

The innocent victim of a love scammer.

It just seems like a bad dream.

I've never

thought

that she would have ever been involved in this.

Japanese prosecutors say Donna Nelson is a drug trafficker.

Her family says she was tricked by a man she thought she was going to marry.

This is the third episode in our series on the romance scam.

If you missed the first two, go back and listen to them.

First, I'll pop a link in the app description to make it easy for you.

In our last episode, we heard how the judges were moved by the evidence that was presented to them during Donna's trial.

And in this episode, we go back into the courtroom to see how they will rule.

Helping us tell this story is the ABC's North Asia correspondent, James Oten.

Thank you, James.

Welcome.

G'day.

And we have Olivia Roussea from Australian Story.

Olivia, thank you for being here as well.

Hey, Stocky, pleasure.

Donna Nelson was a pillar of the community in Perth before she was caught with two kilograms of meth in a Japanese airport.

She was also incredibly family-oriented, but the terms of her Japanese imprisonment leading up to trial were really strict.

She could only talk to her lawyers, no contact with her daughters.

James, before we get to the verdict, what was it like when Donna finally saw them during the trial?

Look, I think you could see Donna's joy and heartbreak at the same time when she walked into the courtroom and saw her family.

Because as we've talked about, she hadn't seen them for the entire

time

since she'd been detained, so 22 months, had not seen her daughters.

Her whole family is there, including grandchildren, to see her.

But the other thing is, is

the officers with her don't let her acknowledge her family.

They don't want her to look at the gallery where the public are.

They want her to sit down with her chains and look at the court, look at the judges.

She wanted to say and speak and you could just see that moment where

they both just wanted to hug each other, but this in the courtroom was time for strictly business in the eyes of the Japanese law.

And once the judge sits down and the proceedings begin.

In Australia, when a trial runs, you have all the evidence presented.

If it's a jury trial, presented before the jury, and then the jury will retire to consider the verdict that they're going to hand down.

What happens in Japan?

Is it a similar system?

Do you know, is there an amount of time that the jury is given or is it kind of an

window for them to go and consider the verdict before returning to deliver that?

It's not a hard time frame when they have to be back in the courtroom to deliver their verdict, but it is all wrapped up into one bundle.

So you have to, first of all, have a majority here, and that has to include at least one of the professional judges.

You can't have all the civilian jury members, six of them in this case, and no professional judges.

You need a balance of both professional judges and the jury or or the lay judges as they're called.

It's actually by the way a relatively fairly new system to have more civilians involved.

It used to just be more judges but then there were issues constantly raised about the

you know whether or not the justice system here was fully free or fair.

So this is a kind of a halfway balancing act that

the Japanese system has tried to pull here.

But certainly when we all came back to court, we knew it was going to be the very moment we found out everything.

Is she walking home or not quite?

Is she going to be deported essentially?

Would probably be the most likely outcome if she's innocent for overstaying your visa would be the reason.

Or is she going to jail and how long for?

We were going to know very soon.

Olivia, I mean, we talked at the end of our last episode about how hopeful the family was feeling.

You know, in the moments before the verdict was delivered.

How were they feeling?

I think the four of the daughters were back in Perth and they all gathered together with family to wait to find out and Crystal, the eldest daughter, was over there.

I think they've always

had to hold out hope and be positive.

Crystal said to me once, we can't contemplate this not

going right.

If you'd have said your mum's going to be in prison in Japan for nearly two years, she said, I wouldn't think I could possibly live through that, but here we are.

So they were really just taking it day by day, but essentially just being positive and hoping that she would come home.

Yeah.

In Australian court, something I've been surprised about is how clinical the delivery of a verdict is.

It's quite a short process.

You know, everyone comes back into the courtroom.

There's a short conversation with the jury about whether they've reached a verdict.

It is basically just that.

Have you reached a verdict?

And, you know, the four-person stands up and delivers that.

James,

how did the delivery of the verdict unfold in this case?

Yeah, so in Australia, the guilty or not guilty verdict is very clinical as you say.

Whereas here it's the judge reading out straight to the point going through the facts of the case.

Then came the crushing blow for Donna Nelson that they have found her guilty of these charges and that she was going to spend six years in jail.

They did take time into account that's already been served so that she doesn't have to serve the extra 22 months again.

That's lopped off that's chopped off the sentence.

But But it became pretty clear once Donna heard six years and you know, just the weight of the room changed drastically.

Just shock, utter shock, because

suddenly what she'd endured for the last couple of years, she was going to have to endure for the next four years.

Yeah, how did Donna react?

I remember hearing from the gallery, we all heard it, Donna saying something along the lines of, what about my grandchildren?

So when the guilty verdict has been handed down, what she is clearly thinking about is the lives that she's now missing out on.

You know, anyone with young kids knows that missing out on them for a few weeks and a few months, big changes happen.

Donna had already missed out on these monumental moments for a couple of years and it was realised that she was going to miss out on another four years.

Wow.

She was heartbroken.

Yeah.

I wish I could pick more powerful words words than that.

Devastated.

Absolutely devastated.

Olivia, how was the family?

Oh, look,

same as Donna.

I just think they were gutted.

I don't think they'd contemplated what it might mean

if she were found guilty and

had to spend more time in prison.

I don't think they could sort of hold that reality as a possibility.

I think Ashley might have a little bit more.

She was forward planning

and

there were, you know, other avenues to try and take, but

the rest of them were, you know, but at the same time, Ashley had been preparing a room for her mum at her house.

And she said every day she'd go in there and,

you know, put another thing that was her mother's favourite perfume or something in there.

And it was a way of kind of honouring her and keeping hope alive.

But I don't think any of them could hold it, hold the possibility of their mum not coming home.

So, yeah, devastating, as James said.

Yeah.

We have Donna Nelson sentenced to six years, found guilty of bringing these drugs into Japan.

What did the judge say about that sentence, about why they landed on that?

Well, interestingly enough, the judge has agreed that she's been caught up in a love scam.

but what the court here has essentially ruled is that she ignored too many red flags.

If we go again to what the prosecution were essentially needing to argue is that she was negligent in, I guess, her duty, negligent in her duty that everything she's doing is above board.

Essentially, the judge has,

and the judge system here, the lay judges and the judges, have agreed with that argument, that she didn't do enough to check that what she was doing or what she was involved in was above board and that she had ignored too many red flags.

Now the prosecution were actually asking for 10 years jail and so in the judges mind six years is lenient.

So that was their kind of middle ground of saying okay we understand that you have been caught in a love scam here

but ultimately the strangeness of this request, that's an exact quote from the judge, the strangeness of this man you've never met says, pick up this bag and take it to me from Laos to Japan.

That strange request, there were doubts in your mind that you didn't resolve.

Now, of course, you know, her legal team vehemently argued that she did try and resolve any doubts, but what you can see is things that have worked against her.

For instance, ticking her arrivals card incorrectly, saying she's not carrying anything else.

Also telling, you know, the arrivals people people that she was here for business instead of love.

Now her excuse was that she was a bit embarrassed to say I'm here for love but she had left I guess enough markers there for the judges to agree that she must have known something was suspicious.

That's what they've decided and that's why they're giving her six years which in their mind was lenient considering the prosecution wanted 10.

We ended the last episode by talking about the kind of hope that was being held out for this.

But James, we've spoken as well in that episode about, you know, the 99% conviction rate that Japan has.

Was this case over before it started?

Well, one thing I can say is one of the reasons behind the 99% conviction rate is that prosecutors here

almost expect to hit that benchmark.

That's the benchmark.

You've got to hit 99%.

If you're getting 90% clearance rate or 80% clearance rate,

then you're not doing your job properly.

So they go for 100% and then there's a little margin of error, I suppose.

So what that tells us is that the prosecutors knew absolutely that they felt they had her hook, line, and sinker, that this case would have been wrapped up in the bag.

They would have been going to this case confidently.

You know, in Australia, charges can be changed because the police or prosecutors feel they don't quite have enough to stack up for the more intense charges.

So murder can be dropped to manslaughter, for instance.

Here

there are many stories about prosecutors almost lowballing charges just to get things to stick.

So first of all we talk about hostage justice where people are held for extended periods of time without a lawyer, without charge and even when they are charged you don't get access to your family.

So people just take the quote easier route and plead guilty.

But otherwise there are all these techniques that we've heard for instance that feels like it's geared up to help the prosecutors.

So, for instance, when they are kind of interviewing her and questioning her, which you know does happen in other countries, I should add, but to deny people access to lawyers for everything does feel like it's favoring the prosecution.

Now, I don't know exactly everything that happened during the weeks that she was held before charge, but what I do know is that prosecutors will only go to trial if they're only 110% sure because that 99% conviction rate, it's not just a statistic, but for many, it's an expectation.

So when this happened, when this case happened, I just couldn't get that out of my mind.

99%,

99%.

And when I did hear that the benchmark was talking about negligence rather than proving she knew the drugs were there, I could see why the prosecution, you know, would have been more confident.

Yeah, I mean, you know, following this trial,

you know, that does seem a little bit like a foregone conclusion.

You know, once we sort of talk through that and hear hear all of that, James.

You know, Donna Nelson is in prison.

Olivia,

what is that like for her at the moment?

You know, we talked about how restrictive it was in between her being charged and her trial, you know,

the communication being so limited.

What is it like for her now?

The only difference after she was found guilty and sentenced was that she was allowed to write letters.

And at first, she was given one letter a week of five pages, and now I believe she's allowed to

write a letter a day.

And then I think it has turned into endless pages.

Straight after the five days of the trial before

sentencing and the verdict day, the judge allowed her daughters to go and visit her for the first time.

So three of them who were about to leave went there and they had 20 minutes with their mum for the first time in nearly two years and James and I were both there.

It was amazing, James, wasn't it, afterwards, seeing how they felt.

You know, just the proximity again, because like I said in the courtroom, they were seeing her and if they had reached out their arm and Donna had reached out her arm, they could have nearly touched.

They were that close.

So they were, you know, really

getting off on being close to each other.

So to actually see her in prison was amazing.

But the only way they can actually talk to their mother is to travel to Japan, to get a translator to come with them and then they have a limited amount of time and the conversation is translated live and it's behind glass so they still haven't been able to hug her or touch her.

So the conditions are the same basically.

She's 23 and a half hours a day in her cell.

She's not allowed to talk to anyone else except for the lawyers, the Australian diplomats or a chaplain type who comes to visit her.

She can't talk to any other inmates or socialise with any other inmates.

She eats her meals in her cell.

And another point that's really

deeply troubling for the family is we're talking about a now 59-year-old Aboriginal woman who's in prison.

Like we all know life expectancy for Indigenous Australians is lower than other people.

We all know about the history of deaths in custody.

There's all this added baggage for them that I think cuts really deeply and fills them with a lot of sadness and fear.

Yes, she's missing out on these milestones in her children's lives and their lives, but they're also very keenly aware of the passing of time and the danger of someone being in that situation.

And I must say, Donna,

for someone who's been in solitary for nearly two years, when James and I saw her in prison, she is formidable.

She's incredibly strong.

When she actually spoke and gave her testimony, you could hear the anger in her voice.

She wasn't, she's fierce.

She wasn't, she was sort of bordering on being rude to the prosecutor at times.

Like, do you think I'm an idiot almost?

You know, why are you asking me this?

You could tell how disgusted Donna was that she had been caught up in drugs.

You know, she detests drugs.

And you could just see the fury in her face, you know, and just how she even said this.

You know, she feels that she's let everyone down, not because she knowingly did this, but just the concept that she has moved drugs around and it could have got out into the community sickens her because it goes against everything she's worked for in the past.

Olivia,

you talk about Donna Nelson as a grandmother.

What are her family's plans at the moment?

Are they satisfied sitting there with this sentence or

are they appealing?

Are they trying to get her out?

As soon as she was found guilty, Donna's lawyers said that they were going to appeal and Donna wanted to appeal.

I know that the family had also been considering a prisoner transfer, which is something where the Government of Australia and Japan will have an agreement whereby Donna can come back to Australia.

Unfortunately, that process can't start until an appeal has concluded.

So they decided to start the appeal

and the prisoner transfer idea is just sort of sitting by.

Yeah.

James, how does an appeal work through the Japanese legal system?

Similar to Australia, you know, you get your verdict, you go, hang on, I think this or this might be done wrong, and they pick those points to argue again?

Is that what's going on?

Well, fundamentally, in Australia, first of all, you have to argue why an appeal has to go ahead.

But when I went to the appeal court here, it was kind of all in one.

You know, we're doing an appeal and here's our new evidence to consider in the appeal for the judges.

And it was all

the...

The lawyers for Don and Nelson, their main argument really rested around using expert testimony, an expert from Victoria who had written a lot about love scams and the potency of these love scams and how sophisticated they are to confuse and dupe their victims and that their victims are genuinely clueless to what is happening to them.

That was really the fundamental thing that they were putting to the appeal court saying this had not been considered by the previous court.

The idea that these victims of love scams are just that.

They're victims and they have been duped.

It's not about being negligent, it's about completely not knowing.

So they put this before a panel of just three judges now, no jury there, and the judges made pretty quick decisions about what they would accept.

And then the next time we hear from all of this will actually be whether or not the appeal is successful or not.

When they're talking about, you know, what they will accept, I mean, you know, you say they made a quick decision.

What did they decide in, you know, what new evidence they'd be prepared to accept?

Well, none of it.

First of all, it was quite brutal.

The judges here just said we're not taking any of that new stuff.

It was a blow,

and I'm going to have a guest saying it's a very big blow to Donna Nelson's appeal because fundamentally what her team have tried to argue in the initial case was how she was duped, she was in love, and she was clueless to what was really happening, genuinely clueless, no doubt.

What this expert testimony goes into great detail is that there are many Donna Nelsons out there.

There are many people, many women who get caught up in these love scams.

And these are highly sophisticated professional outfits that are very experienced at confusing and duping their victims.

I mean, if you look at Donna Nelson, She was speaking to this guy for two years, two years of grooming to convince her and her family that he was who he said he was he ran this fashion business and this story about needing this bag for his fashion business it just kind of made sense but then there's other techniques that they use that this document went into great detail about how they confuse their victims by giving a sense of urgency so Donna Nelson and this man Kelly they had missed opportunities in the past.

There's always some reason that they couldn't meet up, but we'll try again.

But then suddenly, Kelly's got some availability.

Quick, I've got some availability.

Come over now.

And they do these techniques to confuse their victims.

Oh, okay, I've got to pack my bags, gotta get going.

When she's in Laos, you know, they didn't give her the bag at the start when she arrives.

They give her the bag when she's literally on the way to the airport.

Quick, here's a bag.

Sorry, you just got to take this bag.

And inside the bag, there are some clothing samples.

And again, that's a red herring, as Olivia mentioned before.

These are planned techniques to confuse their victims.

And that's what this evidence went into great detail about.

But the judge has ruled he doesn't want it.

He won't accept it.

And that's a big blow for the defence here.

You know, the daughters wanted this kind of expertise in the original case to show it's not just the daughters' summary.

These are experts who are explaining how people can be duped by these schemes.

And it wasn't used then, but they've tried to use then their expert testimony in the appeal.

And it was knocked back.

Why was it knocked back?

And they said fundamentally you have to prove to the court that this new evidence, the reason you're bringing it now to the appeal instead of to the original court case was unavoidable circumstances.

Now clearly when we're talking about an expert here giving advice on love scams It's a pretty high bar to say, oh, it was unavoidable that I couldn't get an expert for my first case.

But that's the benchmark.

You have to prove to the court that it's an unavoidable, and that's similar in Australia, I might add.

There has to be a reason why you're appealing, and you have to prove that the first court got it wrong.

You can't just say, I didn't like that decision, so let's give it another crack.

But this new evidence struck down.

So when we go back to court, I expect it to be a very quick and procedural statement from the judges about whether she is okay to leave, you know, if it's all been wiped clean, or if the sentence sticks.

there is a possibility of going back to trial, that is an option, and you can tinker with the sentence, but that's not what they're expecting.

They're not expecting the sentence to be tinkered with.

It's really going to be, does that initial ruling hold up or not?

Olivia, I mean, we spoke about how the family wanted...

this expert presented in the original trial only to have that knocked back and then for it not to be included in an appeal because you know the effort wasn't made the first time around.

How frustrating is is that for the family?

Oh, I think it's incredibly frustrating.

You know, it's hard to be informing a trial that's in another country and another language with lawyers you can't sit down with and talk to.

And Ashley was very clear and had opinions in the beginning about, you know, she sought a lot of advice from people who had

successfully prosecuted cases,

gotten people out of similar situations in different countries.

And they said, you know, this woman has done this 10 times and she's, you know, freed Australian women and this, that, the other, go for it.

And the lawyers said, no, we want to have you.

And we, you know,

and she just, you know, she had to go with it.

That was, they kept saying, this is the Japanese way.

We don't need any other advice.

You know, this is the way to go forward.

So I think Ashley particularly is very frustrated.

And she actually had to suggest this expert again for the appeal.

And they said it's a very good idea.

Yeah, we'll be bringing you an update on this case, on the appeal of Donna Nelson, after that.

So we'll be in your feed with another episode around then to wrap this up.

Before then, we'll be answering your questions as well.

So if you have questions, please get in touch.

The caseof at abc.net.au.

I mean, James Oaten, you know, you've covered this case since it first broke.

You know, we've spoken a lot about how this unfolded, you know, the way Donna was arrested at the airport, the way the Japanese justice system works.

I mean, is it strange that the police never followed up with Kelly?

You know, this guy that she was going to meet, you know, she had a hotel she was going to.

I assume there would have been someone who would go there to meet her to pick up the drugs.

I mean, does it surprise you that the Japanese police didn't let her out and follow her?

It feels like a wasted opportunity because you've got someone who has arrived from overseas has confessed pretty much straight away what was happening

now even if they think absolutely you are 110 guilty you're a criminal and so on and so forth you know it wouldn't you want to see maybe where the drugs were going i mean that's just you know that seems like an obvious option to me but it looks like there's been really no thorough pursuit now

Look, there could all be all sorts of reasons and why

essentially the law enforcement here.

But you just wonder, is that a wasted opportunity?

You've got this person who's telling you everything.

She's meeting someone at the Narita Airport Hotel.

It's just down the road from the airport.

Don't you want to see who she's meeting?

Don't you want to see where this ends up?

Maybe you'll get bigger fish in this whole drug trade.

There are a lot of stories out there about police in Japan going for the easy targets.

They don't want unsolved cases on their desk, so they go for the easy targets.

That's not to say that there isn't good policing in Japan, of course.

This is a very big sweeping summary, generalisation, but that is a common criticism, a very common criticism.

They go for easy targets and that there are victims of crimes out there who go to police and police is just not interested.

Oh, it's too hard.

It's a little bit too weird.

I mean, I've covered domestic violence here extensively, and that's still considered in the too-hard basket by police in Japan.

And globally, I think that there just is a lack of

grappling with how to deal with this kind of thing.

Like even in Australia, Ash followed up.

She was, you know, a dog with a bone.

She was hearing from Kelly.

Ashley got calls from Kelly after her mum went missing saying, where's your mum?

Have you heard from her?

I've been looking for her.

He wanted his drugs.

And Ash was at the police station lodging a missing person's report when he called the first time.

The second time she recorded the phone call.

He was playing it innocent.

He still wanted to find her or find out if she'd been arrested.

Ash had his phone number.

She gave it to the police.

They said, she said, you know, we should alert Interpol and she was told to lodge a cybercrime report with the AFP, which she did.

She lodged it online.

She provided his ID.

She provided photos, messages between him and her mother, and his phone number.

She heard from

WA police

a few months ago, and this was lodged nearly two years ago, saying

this has been passed on to the WA police by the AFP

and

we, you know, it's in the Japanese jurisdiction, so the police there will be looking for him.

You know, like it's all a bit too late, but that's that was Donna's only hope was that someone would find this guy and pin the tail on the right donkey, you know.

Olivia Rousseau from Australian Story, thank you so much for joining us and helping tell this story.

Pleasure, thank you for having me.

James Oten, the ABC's North Asia correspondent, based in Japan, in Tokyo, where all of this happened.

Also, thank you so much for being here and taking us into these courtrooms and telling this story with us.

Thanks for having me.

Donna's appeal result will be handed down in just two days.

On Thursday at 3:30 Eastern Time in Australia, she'll learn her fate, and I'll be back in your feed then with an update on what has unfolded in that room, taking you through exactly what has happened in her appeal result.

We're also planning a QA episode for this next week as well.

So, please keep your questions coming, send them to the case of at abc.net.au.

We've already had so many wonderful questions, and yeah, I'm looking forward to putting all of them to James and Olivia in our episode next week.

So please get in touch before then.

Also, very soon, we're going to be kicking off our next series looking at the parole of Snowtown murderer James Plusakis.

In just a couple of weeks, he could leave prison on parole.

So we're finding out how someone involved in one of Australia's most infamous serial killings can find themselves in that position.

Make sure you grab yourself the ABC Listen app, and we will catch up very soon.

The case of the romance scam is produced by ABC Audio Studios and ABC News.

It's reported by James Oten and Olivia Rousseau and presented by me, Stephen Stockwell.

Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson, and this episode was produced on the land of the Gadigal and we're on Tree People.

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