UK : Drug factory gang member jailed
The Guardian
Saturday May 28, 2005
Audrey Gillan
A key member of a gang which converted houses into marijuana factories and produced drugs worth more than £5m was yesterday sentenced to two years in prison.
Five men have now been jailed for their part in the growing of the highly potent "skunk" weed on an almost industrial scale.
Hung Tran, 27, of Romford in Essex, the fifth member of the gang to be sentenced, helped convert four houses in various London suburbs into marijuana farms with irrigation systems, high-powered lighting and air circulation units to increase production, Southwark crown court heard.
The drugs cultivation came to light during a surveillance operation codenamed Scorpion which was originally investigating credit card fraud.
Detectives watched four suburban terraces in Romford, East Ham and Blackheath that were yielding harvests of 40kg of skunk, worth £350,000, every six weeks.
Police found almost 6,000 plants filling every room of the buildings, including loft spaces. They discovered containers labelled "buzz bloom supplement", "blossom blood" and "monster bloom" - the most potent strains of the plant.
Michael Shaw, prosecuting, said: "Cannabis used to be a class B drug but it was downgraded to class C last year.
"This reclassification has expanded the market for cannabis, and the growing and production of plants to meet this demand is a highly lucrative business generating large sums of money."
He added: "In order to facilitate the growing of cannabis, whole houses were taken over and converted into cannabis farms with the installation of sophisticated hydroponics growing systems, the use of high-powered lighting and the like in order to optimise growing conditions.
"The plants were tendered and nurtured, and then harvested and sold."
Last year, the scheme’s mastermind, Son Nguyen, 33, of Islington, pleaded guilty to running the operation while his lieutenant, Ha Trinh, 37, of no fixed abode, was convicted and jailed for three years. Tuan Nguyen, 29, of Plumstead, was jailed for two and a half years while Thanh Nguyen, 31, from Leyton, and Mai Dang, 28, of no fixed abode, were each sentenced to two years after all being found guilty of harvesting the crop.
Nguyen ferried his "labourers" to the premises in a £25,000 Mercedes and made almost £1m selling the plants.
Police found the seedling factory behind a beauty parlour in Bethnal Green, east London.
The various gang members claimed they thought the plants were herbal remedies to be used to prepare Chinese medicines.
But the jury women convicted them of cultivating cannabis after deliberating for a little over 12 hours.
Drugs & Democracy Info
Transnational Institute (TNI)
