Illegal immigrant jailed for work at £88k drugs farm

Police uncovered the drug factory when they broke into a four bedroom house in Bright Street, Darlaston on June 12.

As officers burst through the front door, 40-year-old Huur Nguyen ran out of the back of the property but was caught in a neighbouring garden after a short chase, Wolverhampton Crown Court heard yesterday.

Police discovered 104 cannabis plants growing under a hydroponic cultivation system in two of the bedrooms.

A drug squad officer estimated the crop was capable of producing an annual yield of £88,720 in street deals, said Mr Robert Edwards, prosecuting, who concluded: "It was a commercial scale operation."

Nguyen was a married Vietnamese farmer with a child who left his family behind to enter this country illegally three years ago in a bid to find work. He had allegedly paid people traffickers £20,000 to smuggle him to the UK.

After losing a job in a London restaurant he answered an advert on a Vietnamese internet forum. "This led him to meeting a British person who arranged for him to be taken to the premises in question where he was given instructions as to the watering of the plants," explained Mr Anthony Cartin, defending.

The gardener was given food and accommodation but not paid and had been at the address for around two months before the police raid.

Nguyen of no fixed address pleaded guilty to being concerned in the production of cannabis and was sent to prison by Judge John Warner and will face deportation at the end of the sentence.

The judge told him: "This story is sadly not an un-typical one. Those behind this sort of operation make sure they are never at the premises and it is people like you who inevitably end up before the court.

"When you get back to Vietnam please tell anybody thinking of following the route you travelled that this is the way it usually ends up."