A man who acted as the gardener of a £360,000 cannabis farm in a fake Penrith wedding dress shop has been jailed.
Police raided the shop, on Middlegate, on July 11.
“It had, at its front, a bridal shop,” prosecutor Tim Evans told Carlisle Crown Court this afternoon. “But this was a front on a deceptive sense. Because it wasn’t a functioning bridal shop. It was a functioning commercial cannabis farm.”
It was branded The Peony Studio and had a paper note in the window advertising supposed opening hours but also featuring the words appointment only.
Another sheet of paper in the window showed a QR code, urging people to find us on eBay!
In a ground floor room of the property police found 158 cannabis plants.
Three further grows — containing 274 more — were located on two upper floors.
Also discovered were around 2kg of loose and already harvested cannabis buds, plus the remnants of previous grows.
“This suggested that the operation had been ongoing for some time,” said Mr Evans. “This was plainly sophisticated, organised criminality.”
Arrested at the property was 24-year-old Vietnamese national Huu Thanh Nguyen, who had two mobile phones in his possession and, it emerged, was illegally in the UK.
There were living and sleeping areas within the building, fresh food and doors could be locked from the inside. “He was not imprisoned in there, in order words,” added Mr Evans.
A drugs expert had concluded that the 432 plants alone could have produced cannabis with an estimated potential street value of £360,000.
In court, Nguyen admitted a cannabis production charge.
He was said to have entered the UK in May 2022, and worked in the construction industry in Birmingham before friends — whom he called westerners — recruited him to tend the plants.
“He was essentially a gardener of somebody else’s operation,” said Gerard Rogerson, mitigating. “The money he made from it was limited.”
This was sent back to his elderly and ailing parents in his home country.
Mr Rogerson added: “He apologises and just wants to serve his sentence before returning to Vietnam to restart his life.”
Judge Michael Fanning imposed a 27-month prison sentence and accepted Nguyen, of no fixed address, had been naive, immature and susceptible to the influence of others.
But the judge concluded: “This was an operation capable of producing significant quantities, purely for commercial use.”
