[Sativa]

An illegal immigrant who was paid £33 to grow £50,000 of cannabis for his crime gang bosses has been jailed for 18 months.

Poverty-stricken Nam Tran, who left school at eight to become a 20-pence-a-day shoeshine boy in his Vietnam homeland, came to Britain to make his fortune.

But, a court was told, three days after he arrived he was introduced to a drugs baron identified only as Mr Hai.

Hai quickly installed the 19-year-old in a detached house in Chagford Road, Whitley, which was converted into a sophisticated drugs factory with 264 plants under cultivation.

When police raided the house in April they found Tran hiding in the loft, Reading Crown Court was told. Officers seized two mobile phones and a wallet containing Tran's £33.73 take from the profits.

And because the Immigration Service has already begun deportation proceedings, he will almost certainly be sent back to Vietnam when released.

Tran listened intently as the proceedings were relayed by an interpreter.

Alistair Grainger, defending, said: "He is not someone who has smoked cannabis before but he was aware that the operation was not 100 per cent legal."

And, jailing him, a sympathetic Judge Mary Jane Mowat told Tran: "You are one of a long stream of people appearing before this court in exactly the same situation.

"They are people who have come illegally to this country - understandably, given their backgrounds - hoping to make a better life for themselves. People coming from Vietnam who are then taken advantage of by more sophisticated criminals who are living and working here."

She queried whether people who buy cannabis would think again if they knew the exploitation involved in producing it, but added: "Perhaps they wouldn't care."

Deducting 103 days from his sentence for the time he had spent on remand, Judge Mowat told him: "I recognise the apparent senselessness of keeping you in a British prison rather than sending you straight back to Vietnam. But the message has got to get through to people in your country that if they do what you did they will spend time in a British prison."

News Hawk- Lord Mong http://www.420Magazine.com
Source: Berkshire.co.uk
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