A Vietnamese-Australian woman was sentenced to 30 years behind bars on Thursday for attempting to smuggle 1.75kg of heroin into Australia from Cambodia.

Judge Khun Sona handed down the verdict in the case against 38-year-old Tran Ve Thi on Thursday after her trial on April 9.

“After deliberating, Phnom Penh Municipal Court has ruled to sentence Tran Ve Thi to 30 years in prison with a fine of 80 million riel [$20,000] for illegally trafficking drugs in accordance with Article 40 of the Law on Drugs Control,” he said.

“The 1.75kg of addictive drugs were destroyed in December last year,” Judge Sona said.

Thi confessed to hiding the consignment of heroin she had received in Cambodia in a suitcase to take on a flight to Australia. She said she got the drugs from two Vietnamese men in Phnom Penh after arriving in the Kingdom in January last year. In Australia, she was to hand the heroin over to a man referred to only as “Chang”, the court report states.

Thi owed Chang $5,000, and he promised her $10,000 to smuggle the drugs into Australia from Cambodia.

She was arrested by General Department of Immigration police at Phnom Penh International Airport as she was preparing to depart for Australia.