THE family of a woman caught trying to board a flight from Colombia to London with 18 packs of cocaine stashed in her luggage claims she was set up.

Cassandra Sainsbury, 22, from Australia, faces more than 20 years behind bars if she is found guilty of smuggling drugs – like the infamous Peru Two.

Brit partygirls Michaella McCollum and Melissa Reid spent years in a mosquito-infested cell after being caught at Lima airport trying to take £11.5m worth of cocaine to Spain.

Bride-to-be Sainsbury was arrested at Bogota's El Dorado International Airport after an X-ray machine discovered 5.8kg of cocaine in her suitcase as she prepared to fly home to Australia via London.

Her family say a man posing as a translator arranged for her to buy discounted headphone sets which she planned to give guests at her wedding next February.

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They say the packs were pre-wrapped and Sainsbury didn't know what was inside.

Her mum Lisa Evans told Aussie radio station KIIS 1065: "She mentioned these headphones she wanted to get and this man said 'I know a guy and if you buy 16 or 18 of them he can give you a really good price'.

"The day of her departure he gave her the package wrapped in black plastic and she put it in her luggage."

But Colombian police say Sainsbury's arrest is no different from a growing number of drug cases involving foreigners and dismissed her explanation as "not credible".

The case has garnered media attention in Australia and her family has raised more than £1,000 online to fund her defence since her arrest on April 11.

Her sister Khala Sainsbury wrote online: "Our hearts break, because we know she is innocent, but stands little chance of proving it in such a corrupt country."

Her fiance Scott Broadbridge said Sainsbury, from Adelaide, was in South America working for a commercial cleaning company she helped to manage, reports the Daily Mail.

Globe-trotting Sainsbury visited China and Los Angeles in the days before arriving in South America on what she described online as an "all expenses paid work trip", according to her social media.

Her family said Sainsbury was on a "working holiday" to promote her personal training business, but Broadbridge wrote on Facebook that she hadn't worked as a PT for six months.

Her family said a Colombian lawyer told Sainsbury to plead guilty to lesser charges to avoid a long jail sentence.

Her mum said the "best case scenario" was a six-year sentence for pleading guilty, which could be cut down further if she talks to cops about who gave her the package.

Lt Col Jorge Triana, head of the anti-narcotics police at Bogota airport, said Sainsbury's claims she was deceived are probably untrue and didn't excuse her actions anyway.

Triana said: "Everyone who is caught says exactly the same thing. But they know what they're doing."

A Bogotá resident told Daily Mail Australia that technology was expensive in Colombia and hard to find.

She said she had never seen headphones for sale in the city.

Colombia is the world's largest producer of cocaine and its police are among the best-trained to detect and stop drug smuggling.

As tourism to Colombia has boomed over the past decade, the country's drug cartels are increasingly recruiting foreigners to smuggle cocaine out of the country.

Triana said police had arrested 19 foreign drug mules this year alone.

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