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A 2021 video of a ‘Singaporean teacher’ being investigated at an airport in Melbourne for bringing in more than 40,000 cigarettes to the Aussie city is currently blowing up on TikTok.
We wonder why it is only going viral now.
The video, from long-running docu-series Border Security: Australia’s Front Line. starts with a male officer asking about the woman’s frequent but short stays in Melbourne.
When asked what was in her luggage, the woman says it contains “clothes and books” though according to an officer, she had problems opening the suitcase.
A female officer then tells the film crew they suspect she might be hiding something.
As one officer starts prying open the woman’s luggage, another questions how many times she had visited Melbourne in a year.
Initially, she says she wasn’t sure but when pushed for an answer, went on to say “six to eight times”.The woman then says she visits Melbourne for “travel and meeting up [with] friends”.
She also claims she is a “teacher” and works in “some part-time job” when asked for her occupation in Singapore.
The woman then says it was “almost [the] school holidays” and that she “took annual leave” to travel when questioned about how she manages to travel to Melbourne while holding two jobs.
Umm… did the woman, who did not have a Singaporean accent FYI, not know that teachers in Singapore generally don’t have annual leave outside of school holidays?
Well, it seems the gig is up because the forcibly opened luggage reveals multiple boxes of contraband cigarettes.
The narrator goes on to share that anyone carrying more than 50 cigarettes into Australia needs to have them declared as a duty needs to be paid.
The woman then tries to explain her case and says her husband flew to Fiji to attend a wedding and that their bags had been mixed up before leaving China.
However, the narrator notes that the officers had noticed she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring.
The officers then forcibly open her second luggage which was also filled with boxes of cigarettes.
It’s revealed that the two suitcases of cigarettes amounted to more than A$27K (S$23.7K) in evaded duty tax.
The woman is then escorted to a private interview room for further investigation.
After it is revealed that she had visited Melbourne eight times in the past year, the now teary-eyed ‘Singaporean teacher’ denies the cigarettes belonged to her.
Saying she isn’t a smoker and that she is innocent, she even goes as far as to say the “luggage was mixed up” with her friend’s as they looked identical.
The officers seem to think otherwise, and the narrator says they believe that the cigarettes were meant for the Australian black market.
“Her story has changed a couple of times,” says the female officer who highlights how the woman had first said her luggage was mixed up with her husband flying to Fiji before switching to say it was her friend’s bags in the mix-up.
The video ends with the woman escorted to another department that will decide if she is allowed to enter the country as the cigarettes were sent to be destroyed.
Netizens had a field day with this years-old clip with many questioning if the woman was really a Singapore citizen.
“I doubt she is Singaporean with that Chinese accent,” read a comment while another said, “A true-blue Singaporean like myself don’t even understand what she’s saying”.
Photos: Border Security: Australia’s Front Line, garygaryocp/TikTok
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