In 2017, Cassie Sainsbury was sentenced to six years in a Colombian prison. This is her life now.

Warning: This post deals with sexual assault.

After being released from Colombia's notorious El Buen women's prison in 2020, Cassie Sainsbury's life looks very different.

The 29-year-old, who was sentenced to six years behind bars in 2017 after she was caught with 5.8kg of cocaine hidden in her luggage at Bogota airport, returned to Australia in 2022.

Here's everything we know about Cassie Sainsbury.

Watch: Cassie Sainsbury on 7NEWS Spotlight. Post continues below.

What did Cassie Sainsbury do?

In 2022, Cassie spoke to 7NEWS Spotlight about the crime that made her a household name in Australia.

She said her time working in a "gentleman's club" in Sydney first led her down a path of delivering drugs.

Cassie said she applied for the job after she saw an ad on Gumtree advertising an hourly commission rate and flexible working hours.

"I didn't realise it was actually a brothel, because it said 'gentleman's club', and so I imagined a bar," she explained.

Instead, she spent the next two months doing sex work, which she described as "one of the worst things that I have experienced".

Unhappy with the job, Cassie told Spotlight the brothel madam put her in touch with a man named Joshua who was looking for workers to make deliveries.

He asked her to deliver envelopes from the brothel and drop them off at a number of businesses in Sydney's CBD, including an orthodontist.

"I was very naïve," said Cassie, who explained she believed the envelopes simply contained documents.

Joshua later told Cassie he had international work for her, which involved a delivery to London with another girl.

"I look back at it now and I'm such an idiot, to be honest, that I didn't see it," she said. "I really thought that I was actually going to be going with this girl... we were told to receive documents and I thought that he couldn't send her alone because he didn't want her going alone overseas."

Cassie only realised after she received her plane ticket, that she was actually flying to Bogota, the capital of Colombia, instead of London. The ticket was also one way.

When she called Joshua to find out what was going on, she was told it was simply a "minor hiccup".

After arriving in Bogota, she met a man named Angelo, who claimed he knew Joshua and asked her to take a package back to Australia.

"I said 'well, what's the package? Because I've never taken packages.' And he said: 'well, that's not really something you need to have all the details of'," she recalled.

Scared, Cassie said she began looking for flights out of the country but was later spotted and taken to Angelo's apartment where he drugged and sexually assaulted her.

She was then given a large bag to bring back to Australia. Cassie admitted she knew the bag contained cocaine but said she "didn't see a way out".

When she later arrived at the airport to the board the flight, she was arrested by Colombian authorities and sentenced to six years in jail with a $130,000 fine.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Cassie Sainsbury (@cassiesainsbury)

The ever-changing Cassie Sainsbury story.

Cassie was initially facing 30 years in jail when she was caught trying to fly out of the country with cocaine stuffed into 18 headphones hidden in her luggage.

Her story changed multiple times before sentencing, but in a 60 Minutes interview, she said she was threatened by Angelo to go ahead with the plan.

Evidence of the threats made against her existed, Cassie told 60 Minutes in 2017, with messages and photographs sitting in her WhatsApp account showing how she was forced to comply in a scheme she never thought involved drugs until it was too late.

The problem was, Cassie's Android phone was locked with a number pattern. And she said she couldn't remember the passcode. She once again said she couldn't remember the code in a 2020 interview.

On top of this, Cassie's family were also telling different stories. On the same night in May 2017, her mother and her sister spoke to Channel Nine while her then fiancé, father and uncle spoke to Channel Seven. There were claims she was "100 per cent innocent" and also claims that she was "fully aware of what she was doing".

For months, the story changed and every now and again new ones would pop up: She was going to London. She was getting married. Her boyfriend was involved. He wasn't involved. She was a sex worker in Sydney. Her business had failed. She needed the money. She was an unaware drug mule.

Then in November 2017, she struck a plea deal with authorities and was sentenced to six years.

When asked how to explain what happened to her — whether it was due to naivety, stupidity or bad luck — Cassie said there were multiple explanations.

"It's a mix between being desperate, being stupid and wanting to try and do something to get ahead," she told 60 Minutes in 2020.

"And I came out worse."

When she was arrested and sent to prison her partner, Scott Broadbridge, vowed to stick by her, but on KIIS FM in 2018 Cassie confirmed that they had broken up.

Cassie Sainsbury on her time in jail.

During an Instagram Live in 2020, Cassie opened up about her time behind bars, saying she'd seen "the worst ways people treat each other".

"I've seen people stabbed hundreds of times," she shared. "They had knives stuck into them. It's absolutely horrible."

In prison, Cassie embraced a regular exercise routine and competed in a beauty pageant to celebrate the annual Day of the Mercedes (the patron saint of prisons), dressed as an '80s Madonna.

She worked as an English teacher, studying Spanish and taking classes with volunteer groups.

The director of the Michigan School in Bogota, Carlos Carrero, told News Corp Cassie was a "blessing" and wanted to turn her life around.

In April 2020, Sainsbury was released from prison to serve the rest of her sentence on parole in Bogota. She then returned to Australia in 2022 after completing her parole.

Cassie Sainsbury on SAS Australia.

In 2023, Cassie appeared on the reality TV show SAS Australia.

In the opening episode of the series, Cassie explained how the experience reminded her of prison. Cassie quit during the show's second episode, after being unable to face crawling through a tunnel filled with water.

As she left, she spoke about leaving her 'Cocaine Cassie' moniker behind.

"It is one of the first times in a long time that I feel proud of myself in the sense of facing everything that I didn't ever want to see again.

"When I leave the SAS course, 'Cocaine Cassie' dies there. That's it. She doesn't follow me around anymore. I'm just Cassie, but I am the Cassie who has gone through a lot. I've come out the other side stronger, with more resilience, and I hope to be able to prove everyone wrong."

According to New Idea, while most of the 2023 season's cast received up to $30,000, Cassie was one of the highest paid cast members this year. In the past, the highest paid cast members, including Wayne Carey, Sam Burgess and Schapelle Corby reportedly received between $150,000 to $250,000 each.

Cassie Sainsbury on coming out and finding love.

Being in an all-female environment in prison meant Cassie could finally explore her sexuality in a way she'd never allowed herself to before.

"When I was younger I knew I liked women. But I was too scared to come out," she told Mamamia's No Filter in 2023. "I hated having sex with men. I hated it. It was just purely having boyfriends for an image."

In 2020 while on parole, Cassie met her now-wife Tatiana.

Initially it was a friendship, but it turned into something more. And after their first kiss, Sainsbury said the chemistry was instant.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Cassie Sainsbury (@cassiesainsbury)

"From that point on we realised that we both liked each other. I told her my whole history, basically giving her the option to leave if it felt like too much. Because it is a lot. But she said, 'Everyone has a past, so I can't judge you on that. The only thing I can judge you on is what you do from now and forward'. I breathed easy. We knew we wanted to marry one another."

The pair married in Colombia, all of Tatiana's loved ones present, as well as Cassie's mother and her mother's partner, who flew over for the wedding.

Together Cassie and Tatiana now reside in Australia.

Cassie Sainsbury's life now.

Since being back in Australia, Cassie has finished a university degree, travelled and worked with various charities.

She has even set up her own business, Luxe Body Contour.

Now, Cassie is releasing a memoir, titled Cocaine Cassie: Setting the Record Straight, on October 15. In an interview with Newswire, she said that the profits from the book will be split across three charities — Life Without Barriers, MumKind and Kickstart for Kids — which she sees as a way to make amends for her past crimes."This book, the sales are going to charity," she said. "One of them is Life Without Barriers, which has a really good rehabilitation program. I'm constantly trying to give back where I can."

Cassie went on to say that the book is "about giving answers and explanations" for her journey to this point.

Now, she's looking forward to "finally having a chance to speak up", and said that she hopes "that the book sheds light on the complex realities of what crime is and what prison life is actually about and what you can go through".

"I hope that anyone that reads it can find out how easy it can be to be manipulated and go down a very destructive path," she continued, adding that she hopes that her story will both encourage others to "make better choices" and "to see humanity in those who have made mistakes."

As for the future, Cassie is hoping to eventually have children with wife Tatiana.

"One day when I have children, I want them to be able to Google me and feel okay about it and say 'Yes she stuffed up. She did own it publicly. And now she's showing that we're all capable of moving forward, no matter how bad we have stuffed up'," she told No Filter.

"It's an experience that changed my life. I don't think there's one person out there that's perfect. Of course there's different levels to how we do stuff up. But it's how we manage to pick ourselves back up and keep going."

You can listen to Cassie Sainsbury on Mamamia's No Filter here.

This article was originally published in 2019, and has since been updated with new information.

Feature Image: Instagram.