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06
Feb
Vietnamese cannabis farmer jailed after police raid Harrogate house
A Vietnamese cannabis gardener has been jailed after police raided a terraced house in Harrogate which had been converted into a drug farm for the cultivation of over 600 marijuana plants worth a third of a million pounds.
Thuc Nguyen, 34, was sneaking about on the upstairs floor of the house in Chatsworth Grove when officers forced entry into a property festooned with cannabis plants, capable of yielding 35 kilos, on three separate floors – and even under the foundations beneath the property, York Crown Court heard.
Nguyen, an illegal immigrant who is said to have arrived in the UK by paddle boat, tried to escape out of the back door but was caught and arrested, said prosecutor Holly Thompson.
A search of the property in central Harrogate revealed a huge cannabis-growing operation comprising 637 plants and with a street value of between £300,000 and £350,000.
The wholesale value alone was estimated to be £85,000, said Ms Thompson.
'Extremely strong smell'
There was a “terrifying” amount of dangerous, exposed electrical wires strewn throughout the property and the electricity supply had been bypassed.
Ms Thompson said police raided the property on November 28 last year after noticing an “extremely strong smell” of cannabis coming from the house. They saw a light being switched on from the upper floor and heard “footsteps coming from upstairs”.
She added:
One of the officers spotted an individual who refused to come to the front door.
Police broke in by forcing the front door, whereupon “a male ran to the back door and was frantically trying to escape the address”. He managed to get out but was then “cornered” by officers and arrested.
A search of the property revealed cannabis plants in the production stage in four separate areas and on three different storeys.
On the ground floor, the dining room had been converted into a cannabis-growing room.
Ms Thompson said:
On the first floor, two of the three bedrooms were being used as a cannabis grow. The attic, which was accessible by a hatch, was converted into a grow.
Foundations dug out
She said that “unusually”, officers found three further rooms in the foundations of the house where more cannabis plants were “in the production stages”. The foundations had been “dug out by a hatch”, creating a “three-foot void”.
Nguyen was brought in for questioning and, through an interpreter, told police he had arrived in the UK two years ago and had come from France after travelling through other European countries including Russia.
Ms Thompson added:
He said he had not declared himself to [the immigration authorities].
Nguyen, of no fixed address, said that “a man from Birmingham” had taken him to the house in the Harrogate suburbs and that he had been trafficked. He told officers he wanted to seek asylum in the UK.
He was charged with cannabis production, denied the allegation, but then pleaded guilty to an alternative charge of being concerned in the production of cannabis.
He appeared for sentence via prison video link today (February 6), aided by a Vietnamese interpreter, after being remanded in custody.
Fire risk
Ms Thompson said there had been “extensive” electricity abstraction at the property which was strewn with exposed electrical wires stretching from where the foundations had been dug up under the floorboards, to the ground floor and the cannabis-growing rooms.
She said that, according to the emergency services, this had caused a “tremendous fire risk to [neighbouring] terraced properties”.
Defence barrister John Batchelor said that Nguyen had been at the Harrogate property for about a week in November when police swooped on the house.
He said it was another case of “the trusted gardener being the only one found in the property when police raided it”. He added:
He knows that the court will impose an immediate custodial sentence today and that deportation is a live issue.
He’s a single man who left Vietnam just over two years ago. He left […] because of his bankruptcy and his mounting debt. He left […] via Russia, through France, and then on what is described as a paddle boat into the UK.
'Obviously going to be deported'
He said Nguyen first arrived in the West Midlands, where he tried to meet other Vietnamese nationals “that might help him”. He eventually met some “westerners” and “then is brought to Yorkshire”.
Mr Batchelor said Nguyen believed he was heading to “the bright lights of Leeds, but he was brought to a house in Harrogate”.
The barrister added:
It seems it is impossible to know how long [the cannabis factory] had been there and who or how it had been set up.
He will serve his sentence [but] he’s obviously going to be deported.
Judge Sean Morris, the Recorder of York, told Nguyen:
You fall to be sentenced for your part in a big drug business.
You were caught in a house with 35 kilos of cannabis grow. That’s £350,000 at street level. That is serious crime and no drug producer would let an innocent stranger anywhere near that business. The risk to investment would be too great [and] only a trusted fellow criminal would be allowed anywhere near that criminal business.
He added:
From the top [of the property] to the soil under the house, cannabis was being grown and the wiring looked terrifying.
I have never seen such a fire risk and neither had the police, and this was a terraced house.
Jailing Nguyen for two years and three months, the judge told him:
You will serve the appropriate period in custody and I strongly recommend that when you finish your custodial term, you are deported back to Vietnam.
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