Eight people have been handed jail sentences totalling almost 80 years following two separate National Crime Agency investigations into their activities in operating and staffing cannabis farms.
The organised crime groups, whose ringleaders were both based in Birmingham, ran farms across the Midlands, London and north of England, often using migrants brought in to the UK illegally to work in them.
The first gang were dismantled following an NCA investigation into the activities of convicted people smuggler Mai Van Nguyen of Birmingham. He led a criminal network involving fellow Vietnamese nationals Doung Dinh from Birmingham, and Nghia Dinh Tran from London, to exploit migrants by putting them to work.
A trial at Birmingham Crown Court earlier this year heard how Shamraiz Akhtar and Tasawar Hussain, both from Birmingham, were taxi drivers who would move migrants around various properties for the gang, being paid hundreds of pounds a time. On occasion they would also transport cannabis or equipment for the farms.
A sixth member of the gang, Amjad Nawaz from Birmingham, acted as a middleman, and was in regular conversations with Nguyen about workers, the buying and selling of cannabis, and arranging for properties to be used in Birmingham.
Their trial heard from a victim of trafficking, named only as ‘Witness Z’, a Vietnamese national who was exploited by the gang after arriving in the UK by boat in November 2020. Witness Z worked in a number of cannabis grows, saying he had no choice as he was in debt bondage to the people who had transported him to the UK.
In June 2021 he was arrested after officers from Cleveland Police raided a farm at a house in Hartlepool. Inside the property officers found a note pinned to a bedroom door saying “take what you want, please don’t hit me, I do not know English”, and a hand-written diary extract from a migrant in which they ask “why did I get beaten up and forced to work?”
Throughout the course of the NCA investigation cannabis farms linked to the network were found in Tipton, Coventry and Edgbaston in the West Midlands, Derby, Hartlepool, East Ham in London and Gatley in Cheshire. Harvested cannabis was recovered from a further property in Hall Green, Birmingham.
Nguyen and Tran would both plead guilty to conspiring to produce cannabis, but the others denied the charge. All six denied charges of trafficking for exploitation, but following a seven-week trial at Birmingham Crown Court, all six men were found guilty of all charges.
In recent days they have been sentenced. Nguyen was jailed for 15 years, Dinh got 14 years, Tran was sentenced to 11-and-half years, Nawaz 12 years, while Hussain and Akhtar got 10 and 10-and-a-half years respectively.
Meanwhile in a separate hearing at the same court two other members of a second organised crime group were also sentenced.
Roman Le, from Birmingham, headed a gang who operated at least eight farms in residential and commercial properties, as well as a storage facility housing both equipment and harvested cannabis.
Le sourced the properties by posing as property developer, buying or renting them. In some cases scaffolding was put up around the buildings, making it look like renovation work was taking place, to disguise the real use.
Le worked with co-defendants Yihao Feng, from Manchester, and David Qayumi, from Birmingham, to source and operate the properties.
Among them were a disused nightclub in Coventry, a former public house in Birmingham, and an old hotel in Lancashire. Overall the farms were capable of making millions of pounds worth of cannabis.
Qayumi posed as a businessman, working with Le to buy, rent or sub-let the properties, while Feng acted as an ‘operations manager’ for the group, making sure the factories kept working and that what was happening inside was kept a secret.
Many of the farms were staffed by Vietnamese or Albanian illegal migrants, some of whom were likely being exploited because of their immigration status.
A judge handed Feng a sentence of three-years-and-two-months in prison, Qayumi got three-years-and-four-months. Le will be sentenced on July 30.
NCA Branch Commander Kevin Broadhead says: “Today’s sentencing hearings are the culmination of two major NCA investigations into significant organised criminality impacting on people and communities across the Midlands and beyond.
“These gangs were involved in drug production on an industrial scale, often exploiting migrants who had been smuggled or trafficked into the UK for the sole purpose of being put to work, or who were working to pay off debts.
“The men sentenced today didn’t care that these migrants were brought to the UK in incredibly dangerous ways in lorries or in boats and were then made to
live in degrading conditions, often under the threat of violence. They just saw them as a way to make money.
“Tackling organised immigration crime is a priority for the NCA, and it is cases like this that demonstrate exactly why.
“The sentences handed out today should serves as a warning, the NCA is determined to target, disrupt and dismantle the criminal gangs involved, and we will use all the powers at our disposal to do so.”
This article is taken from Landlord Today