NGUYEN: WOMAN CAUGHT HIDING IN A CANNABIS FACTORY

An illegal immigrant caught cowering in the attic space above a ‘sophisticated cannabis factory’ has been jailed for two years.

Vietnamese national Thi Nguyen, 29, was discovered by police hiding in the roof of the property where more than 200 plants were being grown.

Officers raided the house in Oliphant Street, in Kensal Green, west London, after neighbours raised concerns it was being used as a pot factory.

Inside police discovered 219 plants, sophisticated lighting and timers; used to remind Nguyen when to water the crop.

The windows had been blacked out and the electricity supply had been bypassed.

Jailing Nguyen Judge David Higgins said: ‘You cultivated and tended to 219 cannabis plants in various stages of growth and you were part therefore of a sophisticated cannabis factory.

‘The crop was for commercial sale, but you were only the gardener as it is usually known.

‘This is one of the lowest levels of participation.

‘Nonetheless what you were doing means that you were participating in a pernicious and destructive trade.

‘Your conduct, and I do not shirk from saying this, was despicable and deeply antisocial and it is rightly regarded with abhorrence and outrage by the public.

‘The proper and least sentence I can pass is one of two years in prison.’

The court heard Nguyen had been in the UK for matter of weeks before she was arrested.

Defence counsel Nicholas Ornstin told the court his client had arrived in London with ‘nothing but the clothes on her back’ and had been taken in by an elderly Vietnamese woman.

He said she was then taken to the house and instructed to look after the plants.

Prosecutor Gavin Ludlow-Thompson said: ‘Police entered the address and found what appeared to be a sophisticated cannabis factory inside.

‘The lady herself was found skulking in the attic, and the attic was being used as a drying place.’

Nguyen, of (122) Oliphant Road, in Kensal Green, west London, pleaded guilty to producing a controlled drug of class B at the City of Westminster Magistrates’ court on June 24.

She faces automatic deportation as a result of her conviction and sentence.

ENDS