The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

She did it for ‘glamorous Instagram photos.’ Now ‘Cocaine Babe’ is going to prison.

Melina Roberge was sentenced to eight years behind bars

By
April 19, 2018 at 2:31 p.m. EDT

Adapted from a story by The Washington Post’s Lindsay Bever.

Melina Roberge, 24, put everything on the line for some selfies “in exotic locations and post them on Instagram to receive ‘likes’ and attention,” she recently told an Australian court.

In 2016, Roberge, a Canadian Instagrammer, was caught trying to smuggle millions of dollars worth of cocaine to Australia following a weeks-long cruise that she and an accomplice documented on social media. Her admission in court didn’t persuade Judge Kate Traill, who sentenced Roberge to eight years behind bars on Wednesday.

“She was seduced by lifestyle and the opportunity to post glamorous Instagram photos from around the world,” Traill said in New South Wales state District Court, the Associated Press reported.

Roberge — who became known as “Cocaine Babe” in headlines — will serve at least four years and nine months of her sentence, without eligibility for parole, in Australia. She eventually will be deported to her home country, according to the AP.

Melina Roberge, 24, was sentenced to eight years in prison on April 18 after pleading guilty to smuggling 209 pounds of cocaine into Australia in 2016. (Video: Elyse Samuels/The Washington Post)

Meeting her ‘sugar daddy’

Roberge told the court that she was an escort in 2015 when she met Andre Tamin, a wealthy Canadian man in his mid-60s. (His name has also been spelled Tamine in local news reports.)

Tamin recruited her to go on a drug-smuggling trip to Morocco the next year, Roberge said.

Then, she said, in June 2016, he invited her to go on a cruise aboard the MS Sea Princess. The cruise ship would dock in 17 ports in 11 countries, ending in Australia. She was told she could earn $100,000, according to News Corp Australia.

Traill, the district court judge, said Roberge’s “sugar daddy” had “charmed her and spoiled her and became intimately involved with her,” according to news.com.au.

The crime, documented on social media

Roberge agreed to go on the cruise, along with a woman named Isabelle Lagace. They turned their Instagram accounts into online travel journals, posting glamorous photos and boasting about their intercontinental adventures aboard the MS Sea Princess.

Instagram photos showed them on a Bermuda beach, riding recreational vehicles over the desert sand and getting tribal tattoos. The pair did not post about their arrest, which happened when the cruise ship stopped in the Sydney Harbor.

Upon arrival in Australia, border agents searched the ship, discovering 35 kilograms in the women’s cabin and 60 kilograms in a cabin belonging to Tamin, whom Roberge described as her “sugar daddy,” according to the AP.

The women were packing so much cocaine in their suitcases that, the Australian Border Force said, they “did not have much room for clean underwear or spare toothbrushes.”

Tamin and the two women were charged with importing a commercial quantity of cocaine, which carries a maximum penalty of life in prison, authorities said at the time.

Lagace was sentenced to 7½ years in prison late last year, according to the AP. Her non-parole period is 4½ years. Tamin is scheduled to be sentenced in October.

Harsh words from the judge

Before her sentencing, Roberge apologized to “the people of Australia.”

She told the court that in the time she already had spent behind bars, “I have come across people struggling with addiction,” according to the Australian news site. “I don’t want to be part of that.”

Traill also spoke to what she says is a pervasive problem in society: social media use.

“It is a very sad indictment on her relative age group in society to seem to get self worth relative to posts on Instagram,” the judge said in court, according to news.com.au. “It is sad they seek to attain such a vacuous existence where how many likes they receive are their currency.”

“This highlights the negative influence of social media on young women.”