Eight Vietnamese people who ran three large cannabis factories in County Durham, believed to be linked to London-based triads, were jailed at Newcastle Crown Court on 29 September 2006.[1][2] Each factory had the potential to yield crops worth £200,000 a year.[1][2]
Police were alerted by a member of the public reporting suspicious activity at a house in Murphy Crescent on the Woodhouse Close estate in Bishop Auckland, which officers raided on 10 September 2005 to find a sophisticated cultivation operation.[1][2] The house was jointly owned by Thai Thi Vu, 45, of Collingwood Street, Coundon, and Than Van Liu, 42, of Brancepeth Road, Ferryhill, who had bought it that March intending to convert it into a cannabis farm worked by Hai Van Tran, a 55-year-old illegal-immigrant sailor.[1][2] Within a week police found almost identical factories at Haig Terrace in Ferryhill and High Street in West Cornforth, plus more than 400 seedlings and 1.8 kilos of cannabis at Thai Thi Vu’s home with her husband Quang Xuan Vu, 45.[1][2] Thien Van Nguyen, 24, had worked as a driver’s mate delivering equipment, 17-year-old Nam Nguyen as a gardener repaying a family debt, and forensic evidence led police to a ninth man, Phuc Danh San, 47, of Eden Close, Coundon, with growing equipment in his garage.[1][2]
Judge Michael Cartlidge split the group into administrators, who bought cheap houses to convert, and gardeners employed to tend the crops, warning that more important persons might still be arrested.[1][2] Thai Thi Vu, Kuay Khin Dip, 47, and Michael Quan, 43, each received six and a half years, Liu five and a half years, and Quang Xuan Vu five years in his absence.[1][2] Tran received 24 months and Thien Van Nguyen 15 months, while Nam Nguyen received four months in a young offenders’ institution; the three gardeners were expected to be deported.[1][2]
