Kiwis in overseas prisons: More than 70 locked up, true total unknown

The cases span everything from minor drug allegations and remand‑level offending to long‑term sentences in maximum‑security facilities, including several high‑profile murder, trafficking and exploitation convictions.

The largest number of known detainees is in Australia and the United States, followed by Southeast Asia and Europe.

Many are men, and the majority are serving sentences rather than awaiting trial — though exact numbers are withheld where totals fall below five, to avoid identifying individuals.

“This is not a complete list of all New Zealanders in detention overseas, as New Zealanders may choose not to advise the Government of their detention, as is their right under international law,” said a spokesperson for the Secretary of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

In Australia, at least 14 Kiwis are known to be in prison - four sentenced offenders and 10 on remand.

A further 31 are in prisons across Asia, including four who have been sentenced.

Nineteen Kiwis are locked up in US jails, and of those, three are sentenced and 13 are on remand awaiting further court action; six are behind bars in Europe, including three sentenced offenders, and seven people are listed by MFAT as being in prison in “other” locations.

The Herald has reported on many high-profile cases of Kiwis locked up overseas, including recent cases.

In November, Karina Here McGaw and Emily Jade Grindlay, both 22, were remanded in custody in Melbourne after allegedly importing 36kg of methamphetamine, estimated to be worth $37.7 million, into Australia.

The charges came after Australian Border Force officers allegedly found a white crystalline substance in each of the women’s suitcases, totalling about 36kg, which later tested positive for methamphetamine.

The alleged offenders remain in prison as their cases wind through the Australian courts.

Just months earlier in August 2025, Northland pensioner Raemon Parkinson was jailed for importing a commercial quantity of heroin into Australia.

The 70-year-old was arrested at Melbourne International Airport after a baggage search revealed concealed packages in his suitcase containing more than 2.5kg of the illicit drug.

He was later found guilty by a jury and sentenced to nine years and six months in prison with a non-parole period of six years.

In 2009, Auckland man Blazej Kot murdered his wife, Caroline Coffey.

A court heard that at 8.02pm on June 2, the 24-year-old computer science student was helping Coffey load photos from their recent wedding on to Facebook in their New York State apartment.

At 9.47pm, police found Kot sitting in his car in a park 350m from their Ithaca home.

Covered in dried blood, Kot led police and state troopers on a high-speed 8km chase that ended when his car slammed into trees.

He was found slumped over the steering wheel, bleeding profusely from a self-inflicted gash to the front of his neck.

The next morning Coffey’s body was found, brutalised and bloody, on a trail in a park near the couple’s home.

Kot, now 41, was ordered to serve 25 years to life in prison. He is currently an inmate at Auburn Correctional Facility — one of America’s oldest and most unforgiving maximum‑security prisons.

Last year, Christchurch-born pornographer Michael James Pratt was jailed for 27 years in a US federal prison after admitting charges including committing sex trafficking by force, fraud and coercion.

Pratt - the owner and operator of GirlsDoPorn.com - built a multimillion-dollar criminal empire by luring young women into pornography.

Alongside fellow Christchurch man Matthew Wolfe and others, Pratt published misleading modelling ads, preyed on vulnerable women, and promised their sex videos would never be seen online.

In reality, Pratt’s employees posted the videos on to his websites – which featured young women appearing in their first pornographic videos - and even promoted them on free pornography platforms like PornHub to drive traffic.

Victims were coerced into finishing shoots under threats of lawsuits, cancelled flights, and exposure. Some were effectively trapped in hotel rooms by camera equipment blocking the exits.

In 2024, Wolfe was sentenced to 14 years in prison.

In 2018, New Zealand man Troy Skinner staked out a 14-year-old girl’s home in Goochland, a small, affluent town in Virginia before attempting to break the door down with a brick.

After smashing through the door of the home, he reached in, attempting to unlatch it, before he was shot in the neck by the girl’s mother.

The 25-year-old Auckland man had been talking to the girl online and travelled across the world to see her, despite the teenager’s efforts to end communication between the two.

He later admitted to the production of child pornography and was jailed for 21 years.

Clinton Thinn was sentenced to 25 years in a US prison after he was found guilty of first-degree murder.

Thinn strangled his cellmate Lyle Woodward in a San Diego jail in 2016.

At the time of the murder Thinn - the stepbrother of the late National MP Nikki Kaye - was in custody facing charges relating to an attempted bank robbery.

In December 2024, fraudster and former Blue Chip boss Mark Bryers was sentenced to eight-and-a-half years in jail in Australia with a non-parole period of six years.

Bryers and others were found guilty of conspiracy to cause loss and conspiring to deal in the proceeds of crime.

In 2020, bugged phone calls and conversations revealed how Bryers became entangled in an alleged tax fraud and money laundering syndicate.

He was later arrested by a task force investigating an Australian organised criminal group and tax fraud, allegedly being directed by an underworld-connected construction boss.

In 2008 Lindsay Hoani Beckett was jailed for life with a recommended 35-year minimum for the murder of schoolgirls Lauren Barry and Nichole Collins.

Australian media reported that Beckett and Leslie Camilleri abducted the teenagers in October 1997 while they were camping with friends near their homes in Bega, NSW.

The men drove the teenagers around for hours, and raped them repeatedly, before driving them into Victoria and murdering them.

Beckett has been moved between various prisons since he was sentenced - including after becoming involved with a correctional officer.

A 34-year-old New Zealand woman was jailed for 27 years after she admitted murdering her long-term partner with an axe purchased from Bunnings.

It later emerged that before she attacked the 35-year-old she made Google searches about murder, including “can you kill someone with hot boiling water”, “is it really easy to murder somebody with a knife” and “what is the fastest part of body to kill someone with the axe”.

At sentencing, it emerged that the woman - who cannot be named for legal reasons - flew into a “rage of jealousy” when she thought her partner was cheating on her.

She was subject to an Apprehended Violence Order at the time. An AVO is a court-ordered safety measure in Australia that prohibits a person from harassing, stalking, intimidating, or approaching a named individual.

The couple had moved to Australia from New Zealand about 10 years before the murder.

In 2024, Ellen Craig was sentenced to nine years’ imprisonment at the Supreme Court of New South Wales for the manslaughter of her 2-year-old daughter on July 7, 1987.

Craig was extradited to Australia in 2022 after she was arrested in Palmerston North in 2021, where she’d been living since fleeing a cult in the late 1980s.

After being extradited, Craig pleaded not guilty to a charge of murder, however, she was offered a deal earlier this year and pleaded guilty to manslaughter.

The head of the cult she joined in the late 1980s, Alexander Wilon, was also facing charges for helping Craig dispose of the toddler’s body by burning it in a barrel and dumping the remains in a creek. However, he was declared mentally unfit to stand trial.

Antony de Malmanche, 53, was arrested in Indonesia for allegedly smuggling 1.7kg of methamphetamine in his backpack at the international airport in Denpasar, Bali, in December 2014.

He was sentenced to 15 years in jail and has been held at the notorious Kerobokan Prison.

De Malmanche has always maintained his not-guilty plea, claiming that he was set up by a sophisticated criminal organisation that he believed to be an online lover.

Ten years into his sentence de Malmanche was struggling with deteriorating mental and physical health in the prison’s harsh and cramped conditions.

It was reported that the lock-up and sleep conditions in the prison are brutal due to the sweltering humidity.

De Malmanche suffers from serious health issues such as angina and chronic obstructive pulmonary disorder – a lung disease that blocks airflow. He was dealing with anxiety and depression and “just surviving” in the prison environment.

In 2024, rugby player Rory Grice was jailed in France after he was convicted for his part in the 2017 gang rape of a student after a drunken night out.

The court heard that on the night of the assault, the victim met the offenders in a bar and accompanied them to a nightclub.

They all drank heavily, and the student said she later woke up in a hotel, naked on a bed and being violated.

During the police investigation a “sex tape” shot by one of the offenders was discovered. A toxicology report stated the victim’s blood alcohol level was considered in the danger zone for alcohol poisoning.

CCTV footage showed her having difficulty standing up as she arrived at the hotel and being propped up by a player.

Lorraine Cohen and her 18-year-old son Aaron gained worldwide notoriety when they were caught with heroin smuggled in their underwear while boarding a plane at Penang International Airport in Malaysia in 1985. Cohen was 42 at the time.

Under Malaysian law, anyone possessing 15g or more of heroin is considered a dealer and automatically given the death sentence. Authorities found 140g of heroin on Lorraine.

In 1987, Lorraine was sentenced to death. Aaron was sentenced to life imprisonment and six lashes with a rotan cane.

On appeal, the judge accepted that Lorraine was a heavy and regular user and that the heroin was for her own use. Her sentence was commuted to life imprisonment.

She and Aaron were both pardoned after a third attempt and released in 1996, after more than 11 years in prison.

In 2011, former probation officer and grandmother Sharon Armstrong made headlines around the world for falling victim to an elaborate romance scam that saw her imprisoned in Argentina.

Tricked into believing she was transporting top-secret documents for “Frank”, a man she’d fallen in love with online, Sharon was arrested as she attempted to board a flight from Buenos Aires to London with 5kg of cocaine hidden in the lining of her suitcase.

Armstrong was charged with attempting to traffic drugs and sentenced to four years and 10 months in Unidad 31 prison, near the slums of Buenos Aires.

However, she was released several years later.

“To my knowledge, I was never convicted of any offence in Argentina,” she later told a women’s magazine.

“The original sentence was appealed, and subsequent appeals were never finalised, so my lawyers applied to have me deported.”

In 2014, Rotorua woman Leeza Ormsby was sentenced to 10 months behind bars in a Bali prison for smoking half a joint while on holiday on the Indonesian island.

She was arrested in February that year after being caught at the scene of a drug bust at a holiday villa in north Kuta. She was found to have a half-smoked joint in her handbag.

She faced up to 12 years in prison on drug possession charges, but prosecutors recommended Ormsby serve 15 months.

Her defence successfully argued that she be viewed as a drug user, with the court hearing she had previously been treated for depression and heroin use.

The Sydney-based Kiwi was arrested during a police raid of a holiday villa. Inside, they found MDMA and hashish in a drawer.

Ormsby was not charged in relation to the larger quantities of drugs uncovered in the villa, but solely on the hashish joint found in her handbag.

Ormsby had not been staying at the villa, but had been given the key by Australian DJ Marco Mazzucco, who was also on holiday in Bali.

Tauranga lawyer Craig Tuck told the Herald that being in prison overseas is incredibly challenging for New Zealanders facing or convicted of serious criminal offending.

Tuck is the founder and director of LawAid International Chambers and specialises in human rights cases and transnational criminal law.

He represented de Malmanche in Bali and has had a number of other high-profile cases.

He said the biggest challenge for Kiwis in overseas prisons was “the loss of connection with whānau and control on their way of life”.

“By far the biggest is the shock of custody and inability to communicate or control your life - vulnerability to arbitrary decision making of others,” he told the Herald.

The challenge for families was “rules, rules and more rules”.

“Often the biggest challenge is funding to travel and visit or supplying resources such as money for food and medical,” Tuck explained.

It was also “very difficult” for Kiwis to access competent legal representation in many countries.

“Most foreign affairs departments simply provide a list of local lawyers - most of whom have no criminal law experience or worse,” Tuck said.

“Occasionally, they are working with police or other authorities.”

He said some countries were much harder to navigate than others.

“Countries that have language and cultural differences are immediately problematic in terms of obtaining information and understanding the trial process,” he explained.

“Indonesia, where I work, often has its own set of problems with many foreign nationals reporting they didn’t understand any of the court process at all.

“I have had clients in Vietnam where they had appeals that they didn’t know about (like) the death penalty - and in Russia the mistrust and arbitrary decision making by officials leaves defendants bewildered and scared.

Tuck said money played a big part in the outcome of overseas criminal cases.

“It could be said that there is a two-tier system - those with resources get treated differently to those without,” he said.

“Take New Zealand’s prison population (for example) - half are remanded in custody before trial primarily because of poverty of housing - they can’t get anywhere to live.”

Conditions overseas were often marginal - and terrifying for some people remanded in custody.

“I work in jails all around the world, and all suffer from resource difficulties leading to overcrowding and safety issues,” Tuck said.

“In the US Federal prisons, this is extreme. Other jails can have a community feeling, whereas US jails are very clinical with mass incarceration and long lockdowns.

“Remand populations are always stressed, but once in the low security prisons, things seem better.”

Tuck said MFAT were “exceptionally good at support” when Kiwis were in prison overseas. But their role was very specific and limited.

While MFAT can check on a detainee’s welfare, strict diplomatic rules prevent staff from interfering in any country’s legal process.

That is where lawyers like Tuck step in.

His work includes lining up trusted local lawyers, co-ordinating NGO and expert support, developing litigation strategies and dealing directly with police or security agencies.

Tuck said the thing that gave inmates the most hope was simple.

“I would say meaning, light at the end of the tunnel and human dignity,” he said.

“Simple respect for the human condition goes a long way.”

Tuck said if a New Zealand national was remanded in custody overseas, their family should contact MFAT or his team immediately.

NZ Embassies can help you if something goes wrong while you’re outside NZ. Other jails can have a community feeling, whereas US jails are very clinical with mass incarceration and long lockdowns.

Consular and embassy staff cannot give you legal advice, investigate a crime or get you out of prison.

They can not get you better conditions in prison.

For emergency consular assistance call:

For more information, click here or visit safetravel.govt.nz

You can also contact Craig Tuck’s team at LawAid.

Anna Leask is a senior journalist who covers national crime and justice. She joined the Herald in 2008 and has worked as a journalist for 20 years with a particular focus on family and gender-based violence, child abuse, sexual violence, homicides, mental health and youth crime. She writes, hosts and produces the award-winning podcast A Moment In Crime, released monthly on nzherald.co.nz