22/10/2007 00:00:00
UK: Cannabis plantation farmer gets two years
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A VIETNAMESE cannabis farmer found living in a four-bedroom village home
stuffed with plants worth £60,000 has been jailed for two years.
Cambridge Crown Court heard how Tinh Duc Tran, 35, was discovered at the
Linton property living in a cannabis factory - a rabbit warren of
plants, electric wires and growing lamps.
From the outside the 1960s terraced home looked like any other in
Kingfisher Walk.
But when officers raided it on August 23 they revealed more than just an
ingenious horticultural set-up and 521 maturing plants.
They discovered a murky tale of organised crime, starting in Vietnam,
weaving through Russia and Europe, and ending in Cambridgeshire with
illegal immigrant Tran working as a cannabis "gardener".
Tran also faces deportation to his home country after admitting his part.
But Judge Gareth Hawkesworth said he considered Tran part of a much
larger criminal enterprise.
He said: "You arranged yourself to be brought illegally into this
country and joined a profitable and organised criminal syndicate.
"But I accept you were a relatively lowly member of the team with
principal responsibility to look after the plants. You are a very
foolish young man."
Sara Walker, prosecuting, said Tran's story ended with Cambridgeshire
police finding a maze of wires, 39 lamps, five timers, 54 transformers,
some heaters and three air extractors. Every room of the house was full
to the brim with plants at different stages of growth.
Tran was living there but, Miss Walker said, "someone else" paid the
rent, and another unnamed man helped him set up the factory.
No one else has been arrested, but Miss Walker explained how Tran ended
up in the house alone, 10,000 miles from home and £10,000 in debt.
She said he flew to Russia to try to earn money to pay off a £1,000 debt
owed by his three- child family.
Miss Walker said Tran made it to Dover, where he was picked up at the
side of the road by a woman who gave him £35 for food and a ticket to
London.
At King's Cross, Tran said in interview, he was picked up in a van
driven by two unnamed men who then offered him a "gardening job" and
somewhere to live.
He told police he had not left the house and the plants once in the five
weeks he was there. His food was delivered to him, and he was not paid.
The extra £9,000 debt he now has incurred, Miss Walker said, is the bill
for his journey to the UK.
http://www.cambridge-news.co.uk/
Source:
http://www.ukcia.org/news/shownewsarticle.php?articleid=12925
Author:
Cambridge Evening News via UKCIA
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