Drug mules are nothing new in the illegal drug trade, especially when it comes from Latin America. However, the usual suspects are impoverished people leaving their home nations for the United States while carrying thousands, if not millions, of dollars-worth of drugs. Yet, recent years have seen the rise of affluent, white Europeans taking dangerous risks and trying to sneak drugs into Europe and they have been getting caught.

On Dec. 13, 2013, two U.K. women, Melissa Reid and Michaella McCollum, were sentenced to six years and eight months in a Peruvian prison after trying to smuggle £1.5 million worth of cocaine, according to the BBC. They are the most recent in a group of women that are stuck in Peru without the means to leave, says the AP in a new report. Peru is now the world's number one producer of cocaine.

According to the article, foreign women who are caught smuggling drugs receive sentences of up to 15 years and cannot leave the country until all fines and paperwork has been completed. Another woman, a German named Nicole Bartscher, had her sentence commuted but has remained trapped in the country unable to pay the $2,410 fine she owes. "It's torture for us," the 40-year-old Bartscher told the AP from the convent where she now lives. "Just let us leave is all I ask. We are free, but this is just another prison."

Bartscher was given the minimum sentence, the same as McCollum and Reid, however, The Daily Mail reports that one of these women could be going home much sooner. According to the newspaper, Reid's family has already paid her £3,500 fine and has applied for a prisoner transfer. If approved, she would finish the six years of her sentence in the U.K,. leaving McCollum alone in a Peruvian prison.