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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Cannabis plantation farmer gets two years
Cambridge Evening News
Monday 22 Oct 2007 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/
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