Romance Scam: Who is Donna Nelson?

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She was taken aside at a Japanese airport and arrested with two kilos of meth in her bag at the mercy of a foreign justice system.

I'm Stephen Stockwell.

Welcome to the case of the romance scam.

Since her arrest 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.

In January 2023, Perth woman Donna Nelson flew into Japan.

She thought she was going to meet a man she had been talking to online for years.

She was excited about taking that relationship to the next stage.

Instead, she was arrested at the airport and put on trial.

She is still fighting the charges, and later this month, there will be a crucial day in court, which could mean she could come home.

We'll be following it all here on the podcast as it happens.

Donna's story, though, is a window into a justice system very different from Australia's.

I don't think we realise this, but when we travel, we're probably not as far away from Donna as you might think.

Every day, two Australians are detained overseas.

It's one of the reasons I'm so keen to learn more about Donna's experience in this system.

And to help me do that, I've got some friends with me.

The first is James Oden, the ABC's North Asia correspondent based in Tokyo, one of our foreign correspondents.

And James, you have been following this this story since it broke.

You've been in court for a while.

You've seen this process unfold.

But so people can get an understanding and, I suppose, get to know you like I do, can you give us an insight into what your life is like in Japan?

Well, I've been here for almost four years now, and I moved here with my partner and my kid.

He was a baby then, now he's a toddler.

So that's been an absolute joy to grow up here in Tokyo.

But at the same time, I am looking forward to the, I guess, more openness and chattiness and friendliness with Australian being back, you know, in more familiar surroundings because Japan, it's not an open book.

When you come here, it looks fun, it looks fabulous, what an exciting place to live.

But when you've been here for only a few months, you realise that there is a weightiness to Japanese culture and a reservedness to Japanese culture.

And that's quite

prohibitive.

as a journalist because you're trying to crack through that facade to get the more honest and open stories.

So pleased we could get you for these episodes to help us tell the story of Donna Nelson and give us an insight into those systems in Japan, what it's like trying to break through, how hard it is to get information and tell these stories.

So thank you so much for being here and joining us for these.

Also joining us to tell this story is Olivia Rousse, a producer with Australian Story.

Olivia, you traveled to Japan with Donna's family for her trial.

How often do you find yourself in your kind of work travelling to do court reporting in Japan?

Well, for a program called Australian Story, not very much.

But it was kind of a no-brainer in terms of how are we going to tell this story without Donna.

Australian Story is always focused around an individual who we speak to at great length and we couldn't do that with Donna.

So telling her story through her daughters was the only way and they were kind enough to let me and my camera sort of follow them around for the time they were there.

And

then I went to Perth afterwards and spent a lot of time finding out about who their mother was and how this all came to be.

But I've always been shocked since I found out about Donna and I only found out about Donna's story a few months before the trial.

Everyone's heard about Chappelle Corby.

No one's heard about Donna Nelson, but she's an Australian who has been convicted of smuggling drugs or a version of that.

You know, but but really still the the general public don't know about it.

In Perth there's a lot of talk about her case,

but it sort of hasn't translated to the east coast of Australia.

You know, it does feel like it's been relegated to being just a Perth story rather than a national story.

Yeah, I mean, Donna Nelson was living in Perth before she found herself in a Japanese prison.

So, you know, I can see the draw there.

But yeah, it is surprising that, you know, we haven't heard more about this.

I mean, you know, I'm...

I'm pleased that we can bring more attention to it through the case of, as well as giving you all an idea of what's happened to Donna.

I mean, both of you know so much about this.

Olivia, you have such a deep knowledge of Donna's experience.

You know, she sounds like a really incredible woman, quite frankly.

But first, James, I'm keen to get an idea of the Japanese justice system.

I mean, can you give us an idea and a sense of what Donna landed in?

Two things.

First of all, it's an incredibly opaque system in the early months until you get to that trial, which is an open court system similar to to what you see in Australia.

But before then, it is an opaque system.

There is no open court system where you can see the accused, hear about what's happening with their charges, and getting updates on the case.

There's none of that.

The person is incarcerated, and it's almost like they disappear into a justice black hole for months or years.

There's another element of the Japanese judicial system which is quite infamous, and that is the 99% conviction rate.

Other comparable countries don't go anywhere near that, usually around the 90%, take or give a few percentage points.

There is a 99% conviction rate.

So already just from that alone, when I heard that an Australian woman had been caught with drugs, it did not look good for her chances, given that fact.

And there is some elements of tying these two things together, that the

justice system here has a reputation for almost forcing kind of confessions out of people because they do get held without charge for up to three weeks and that's per charge.

So there's even been cases in Japan where someone is being questioned for charge number one for three weeks, no access to the family, limited access to lawyers.

They can question you without a lawyer in the room.

Then they decide, okay, we'll release you.

You walk out there and they arrest you and give you another charge.

and another three weeks starts.

So there are also cases of people

who up just admitting guilt and this is where you get the phrase hostage justice.

People decide it's easy just to declare their guilt and get it over and done with.

Doesn't sound like a kind of ideal place to find yourself involved in a system like that.

Olivia, I mean, you've travelled to Japan, you have seen that system first hand, you've been there with the family of Donna Nelson, you know them, you know a lot about Donna.

Tell me about her.

Who is Donna Nelson?

So Donna is, she's from Western Australia and lives in Perth.

She's a Nyaki-Nyaki woman who grew up in Meriden outside of Perth.

She's a single mother of five adult women,

ranging in age from, you know, at the time she left, I think the youngest was 19 and the eldest was in her late 30s.

They're an incredibly tight family.

Like the girls, her daughters call her Jig, which is sister in language.

And they have this chat group and they talk several times a day and she's popping in all the time and they stay over at each other's houses.

They're just really bonded and she, I think she was quite young, about 18 when she had her first child.

But Donna's always worked with Aboriginal community.

She's a community leader and she worked in child protection system for years, but she'd recently, over the past decade, started up

an NGO for kids at risk, not just Aboriginal kids, but other kids, and it was based on basketball and it was called Pioneers.

And she would personally have these young men and boys staying at her house if they lived, you know, out bush or wherever, but she wanted to bring them down, get them out of trouble, get them engaged in basketball, to give them something to a bit more of an anchor.

So she was a mother to many.

And when I went to Perth, I sort of found that out.

She really was, you know, I had these men, young men playing basketball, nearly crying talking about what she meant to them.

And one of them called her mum and stayed with her for two years

to get into basketball.

But she was just this staunch,

very

open, emotional, caring woman, you know, really.

That's what I learned from her family and from the community.

She was always speaking out.

She was on a lot of panels and stuff like that.

different conferences.

So she was just a very active community member who was there trying to make the lives of kids better.

You know, and as her daughters say, ironically, a lot of those kids were at risk because their families were affected by substance abuse.

And Donna had never drunk.

She didn't drink alcohol.

She didn't smoke.

She was, you know, very anti-drugs and just interested in helping people.

But she'd got to the, Donna had got to the point in her life where She'd raised these five girls pretty much on her own and her youngest was 19 and she was about to start living her life for herself.

You know, her first husband, her husband left her when she was pregnant with her fifth child.

So she had dated but essentially hadn't found the right person or someone to share her life with for 19 years and had just worked to support her daughters and other people.

So she was ready to start living life for herself a little bit.

Yeah, and part of that was looking for someone that she could share that life with, right?

And she's met this guy online called Kelly.

What do we know about him and how close him and Donna became?

Yeah, Kelly, she had used this dating website before.

It was called Afro Introductions and she'd met, she said that she wanted to meet another

black person, person of colour, because she,

you know, has had certain lived experiences that she felt only someone else like her would relate to.

And she met Kelly and they started chatting.

Kelly was Nigerian but lived in Japan and had said that he had been married to a Japanese woman, had two Japanese kids and he had several fashion boutiques throughout the world.

He'd sent Donna photos of his kids and, you know, they had video chats all the time.

He was very, you know, according to the chats that we were witness to and what the girls told me, you know, very much involved in his fashion business and business and travelled a lot for business.

And Donna, I think at at times, felt a bit overshadowed by his business needs.

And he was always trying to sort of fit in visits with her in and around his trips to places, he said,

for his fashion industry.

But, you know,

they chatted on video calls.

The daughters told me, you know, probably about five times a day, first thing in the morning, she'd be having breakfast and they'd be FaceTiming.

They'd chat throughout the day and then they'd get on again and say goodnight at the end of the day.

So there was this really, you know, pretty strong investment.

It wasn't just a few emails or voice calls.

They were, they knew each other's lives and had been chatting and in a relationship and in fact engaged

for two years before she left.

And they've obviously gotten to the point where they've

found some time for a trip at one point.

You know, they've had this conversation and they're looking, you know, early 2023, look, come and visit me in Japan, spend some time here.

What was the reaction of Donna's daughters to the news or the idea that she would be going to meet Kelly?

Well, most of Donna's daughters were actually really happy for her.

They saw how happy he made her.

You know, they were around when she would chat to him and she would talk about him and they were like, oh, it's so great, mom.

And, you know, finally someone's going to look after you.

You know, hope it goes well.

One of Donna's daughters was very suspicious

and she lived interstate at the time.

Her second eldest daughter, Ashley, was, come on, mom, send me, you know, I don't know about this, I don't know about this.

So Donna tempered the way she spoke to Ashley about him and that wasn't hard because Ashley was in Brisbane and the rest of the girls, they all live really close to each other and a few of them actually live together.

And

they were just happy for her.

So it was actually late 2022,

around Christmas time, Kelly said, look, come at Christmas to Japan to visit me.

Get the time off work.

I'll pay for the whole thing because I can't come to Perth.

Because she'd been saying to him, come to Perth, come to Perth.

And he said, look, I can't.

You come to me and I'll pay for the trip and bring you over and treat you like a princess and we can meet each other in the flesh.

But Ashley kept asking her mum what was going on and her mum kept deflecting.

And Ashley said to me that Donna felt like she was standing in the way of her happiness and was going to ruin things for her.

So she was trying to say to Ashley, look, don't worry,

I know this guy, I'm in love with him, it's fine, he loves me,

just let me go.

Right, so you know, she's heading off on this trip to Tokyo via Lao for a few days for, you know, to be pampered.

Before she goes, Olivia,

I mean, I think anybody will probably have like a just a sneaking suspicion, making sure they're actually going to go and meet a real person.

Is there anything that she does before she goes to confirm that that kelly is who he says he is

um yeah well her daughter had asked her earlier on at other times when she was going to go and meet him ashley her daughter had asked her previously to send confirmation,

send me his passport, send me, like she wanted, Ashley was really, she really should be a lawyer or a cop.

She was

she does work in investigations of a type, but she said, I want to know who he is.

I want to know where he lives.

I want to know what he does.

I want proof.

So her mum described Ashley as the daughter who asks all the questions to Kelly.

And Kelly sent his ID card from Japan, a photo of his ID card, which she then sent on to Ashley.

And Ashley had said, I want a photo of him.

So she did a screenshot of him when they were chatting on FaceTime one day,

him with his shirt off.

And Ashley

was just just like, oh, yuck.

But

yeah, so Ash had been asking for all this stuff and,

you know, Ash got to the point when Donna was leaving where she sent her an article about romance scams to do with money, not to do with drugs.

It was to do with laundering money, I think, and said, Mum, read this.

And the texts back and forth were kind of, don't worry, I'll read it.

I'll read it.

Don't worry.

I don't know if Donna did read it, but she sent that text text on to Kelly and said look how silly my daughter is she's sending me this she thinks you're a scammer

so Donna was really credulous of Kelly

and

Ashley's warnings fell on deaf ears

unfortunately she you know I think Ashley has the reputation in the family as being the worry wart

you know so Donna was just dismissing it because she was so happy with this guy who was promising her everything.

So Donna Nelson, you know, goes on this trip.

She hops on a plane to Laos,

but this actually ends up getting off to a bit of a rocky start, right, Olivia, because she gets to her hotel where she's going to be pampered and nothing's paid for.

And she calls Kelly and just says, look, this is too much.

I'm turning around.

I want to go home.

Yeah, she was really disappointed because Donna had never traveled on her own overseas like that.

The previous trips where she'd met men, she'd taken one of her daughters with her.

And she planned to take a daughter with her on this trip, but she wasn't able to.

So

she felt like she was going to be looked after and she wasn't a super confident traveller.

He hadn't even booked the hotel that she turned up at and it was quite an expensive hotel and she didn't have that much money because he'd said, I'm paying for your trip.

So she stayed at the hotel and she said, look, if you were coming to see me, I would completely look after you.

Do you not care about me?

You know, why have you done this?

she felt out of a depth and actually

called

her daughter Ashley.

And

my interpretation of this is that she told Ashley that she thought she had food poisoning and she felt sick and she was thinking of coming home.

When you marry that up with what we know about her

texts with Kelly and being uncomfortable with the fact that he hadn't booked anything and she said to him in these texts, I may as well just go home.

I want to go home.

I'm booking a trip home.

she was telling Ashley she felt sick you know she probably did feel sick but she

she was having second thoughts she thought this guy doesn't isn't looking after me and I don't feel comfortable she and Ashley spoke on the phone this is after a couple of days in Laos and Ashley was trying to book the flight for her with Singapore Airlines and she said the booking went all the way through to the next level and it came to payment and then it timed out and Ashley had put her credit card details in but for some reason the payment didn't go through and she tried to do it again it didn't go through and then she said to her mum look take some cash go to the airport and buy a ticket there

and that was just the sliding doors moment of what could have been but before that happened when she was on the phone to Ashley Kelly actually

was communicating with Donna and Donna said I'm on the I'm booking a flight home I'm going home and and he said let me talk to your family and Donna gave him Ashley's number.

He called Ashley and he said I will do whatever I can to look after your mum.

I know she's not feeling well.

Don't worry about it.

I know someone in Laos.

I have an associate in Laos who can come and bring her some medicine, make sure she gets on the flight and when she comes to Japan, I'll take care of her.

Don't worry about it.

And he was so convincing that she spoke to Donna and Donna said, what do you think?

And Ash said, I think he genuinely cares about you, mum.

And so Donna decided to stay based on the fact the daughter who had all the doubts had said he sounded genuine and like he really cared about her.

So feeling more confident, Donna stayed.

And

of course, Kelly's associate came to see her, brought $1,500 to cover the hotel that Kelly hadn't paid for.

And then later came and brought a suitcase and asked her to take that to Kelly.

And the idea of being a suitcase, you know, to me, seems like a red flag at a moment like this.

But the seed of a suitcase had actually been planted months, if not years earlier, right?

Yeah, yeah, totally.

And that's the thing, you can just look at it on face value and go, oh, you idiot.

You know, like, how did you not know?

But yeah, literally months earlier, Kelly had dropped into conversation with Donna when she was in Perth.

Oh, I'm looking for a particular kind of suitcase to stock in my boutique.

And Donna said, and he talked about it quite a bit.

And she said, oh, send me the dimensions.

I'll see if we've got anything like that in Perth.

And she actually went with her middle daughter, Janelle, to a local shopping centre, to a, you know, strandbags or something, to try and find a suitcase that fitted the bill.

So they'd had conversations about this.

And she sent photos and said, no, no, you know, he said, no, that's not quite right.

It's too big, too small, whatever.

So that conversation had previously happened, and he'd planted that seed in her head.

So the guy brings the the suitcase to the hotel, meets her in the garden of the hotel, gives it to her and Kelly had said, just

give him your old suitcase and he can chuck it for you.

Put your stuff in this new suitcase.

And it was 15 minutes before she was due to be at the airport to check in that this happened.

So it was very much last minute.

And Donna says that she took that suitcase up to her room, opened it, you know, felt around in there and she said there was this bundle of clothes in there.

And she took them out and she looked at them them and she said to Kelly what's this bundle of clothes and he said oh there's some samples for my fashion boutique just leave them in there and bring them and pack your stuff in so then she she checked through she said she checked through the samples to make sure there was everything was above board put all her stuff in you know closed the suitcase and then checked out of the hotel and went to the airport Those clothes were the perfect red herring, in my opinion.

It gave her something to worry about, but it was the wrong thing.

Yeah, because she goes to the airport, she gets on the plane and she flies to Tokyo.

And, you know, her daughters, while being, you know, supportive of this idea, still have, you know, they're worried about their mum.

So they've actually got a tracker on her phone so they can see where her phone is.

And she gets to Japan and then they don't hear from her.

In fact, her phone doesn't leave the airport for days.

James, what do we know about what happened to Donna when she arrived at the airport in Tokyo?

Well, when she arrived, her bag had been taken off the carousel.

So usually when you arrive at an airport, your bag will, you know, come out of that magical place that none of us get to go to.

It spits out in the carousel and you go, there's my bag.

You grab it and you go through customs and other security.

Well, it was already pulled to the side.

So she's gone to claim it.

And that's when the authorities then have said, well, just your bag?

And she says, yes.

And they said, well, come with us.

Now, she had on her form, on her arrival card declared that she was not taking anyone else's items

now they've questioned her about this thing is this your bag and you've you've ticked here that you're not carrying anyone else's items

come with us for a scan in that scan room they've gone into more detail about other items such as carrying bags if you're carrying bags for people maybe you you know there can be drugs hidden inside the bags so it's more explicit about what they're kind of

on her for

and that's when she's kind of admitted oh okay that's that's not my bag and they've scanned it and then you can see that there are something suspicious in in the bags and they've opened it up and you know

she was just in absolute shock because the drugs weren't just sitting in the bag donna had thoroughly searched the bag and all she saw was these fabric samples the drugs were in the lining of the bag bag hidden within the suitcase walls and that's when they've opened up and that's when I guess her heart would have absolutely dropped to the floor.

Yeah.

She dropped to the floor I believe.

She actually did collapse, yes.

I can't imagine what that moment would have been like in Tokyo Airport seeing the the drugs, I guess the two kilos of methamphetamine tucked into the lining of her bag.

In our next episode, we're going to take you into the courtroom.

Donna was charged with trafficking drugs when when they found this.

So with James and Olivia, we're going to go inside that room and find out what the prosecution was pushing and how the defense team was arguing that she wasn't guilty, that instead she was the victim of this romance scam.

We'll have that in your feed on Thursday, so make sure you grab yourself the ABC Listen app.

You'll be able to get the episode before everybody else does if you've got that.

But if you are using a different one, give us a rating and a review because it'll mean it's easier for other people to find the story of Donna Nelson, which is an important story that more people need to hear.

You can also pop it in your group chats, share it around, all that kind of thing.

And don't forget that we have an email as well, the caseov at abc.net.au.

We love hearing from you, your questions, your insights, your feedback.

So please get in touch.

We're planning a special QA episode with Olivia and James as we get to the end of this series.

And yeah, we're looking forward to answering all your questions in that.

So please get in touch.

The caseov at abc.net.au is the best place to reach us.

We'll be back in your feed on Thursday.

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

It's reported by James Oden and Olivia Rousseau.

It's presented by me, Stephen Stockwell.

Our executive producer is Claire Rawlinson, and this episode was produced on the land of the Gadigal and Wurundjeri people.

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