Yoke Cheng Chin: Malaysian man jailed for 15 years over 182kg meth importation role loses sentence appeal bid

A Malaysian tyre fitter who was handed a hefty jail term for his role in a multi-national syndicate that imported 182kg of meth on to a remote WA beach has failed in his bid to appeal his sentence. Yoke Cheng Chin was part of a group of Chinese and Malaysian nationals behind one of WA’s biggest ice hauls - worth an estimated $91 million - brought in via boat in the early morning darkness to Port Denison, near Geraldton, in May 2016. Chin mainly performed the role of “store person” for more than 50kg of the meth with a purity of 80 per cent, which police found three weeks later when they raided his Embleton rental home, stashed inside two suitcases. He denied having touched them and could not explain who had put thousands of dollars in his bank account. But his fingerprints were on the luggage. Also incriminating was his possession of three mobile phones, one of which contained a series of messages in which Chin gave instructions where money was to be deposited and later confirmed when the sum had cleared. Along with 12 other men, Chin faced a marathon Supreme Court trial in 2017, involving dozens of lawyers and interpreters. The court was told during sentencing submissions that Chin had amassed debts in Malaysia after suffering an injury in a traffic accident and racking up significant medical expenses. So when he was offered a job in Australia by an unidentified male in Kuala Lumpur - with the details of the work involved not explained to him at the time - he agreed and was handed about $700 and an airline ticket. The then-33-year-old eventually found out what was being smuggled, and continued to do what was asked. In handing Chin a 15-year jail term with a non‑parole period of nine years and eight months in 2018, Justice Bruno Fiannaca said he was not a passive participant. His duties included buying the suitcases and making sure the drugs were kept safe, which meant he had a significant degree of trust in the illegal enterprise. Chin filed an appeal notice in July last year, arguing the sentence was manifestly excessive and was not sufficiently different to a co-offenders term - and that he was more than six years “out of time” because he’d only just found out what the other man got. But the WA Court of Appeal ruled on Tuesday that those grounds had no reasonable prospect of succeeding, refusing leave to appeal.