Illegal immigrants turned Scots home to £500k drug factory
A pair of illegal immigrants turned a humble Scottish terrace house into a half a million pounds drug factory.
The Vietnamese duo set up more than 500 cannabis plants behind closed doors in a quiet residential street in Dundee after sneaking into the UK.
When the property was raided, the cannabis inside the three-bedroom terrace was worth more than four times the value of the £125,000 house itself.
Ban Van Nguyen and Long Van Le were caught red-handed tending the huge crop of cannabis plants growing throughout the property at 2 Dighty Gardens in Dundee.
Dundee Sheriff Court was told that 510 plants, with a potential value of £382,500, were recovered when the house was raided by police on 16 January this year.
The duo had also harvested more than 14 kilos of cannabis with a value of £143,060 and were drying it for onward sale when officers forced their way in.
Nguyen, 53, and Le, 33, admitted being concerned in the supply of cannabis and producing the drug at the property on 16 January this year.
Fiscal depute Duncan McKenzie told the court: "In December 2024 and January 2025 Police Scotland received intelligence about a cannabis cultivation in a busy residential area.
" Entry was forced and both were found within. Most rooms in the property had been converted into a cannabis cultivation. The bedroom upstairs was used as a drying room.
"Cannabis bud was spread across the floor and being dried with a desk fan. Both were arrested. Their DNA was found on various items throughout the property.
"There were no reasonable grounds to conclude either was the victim of modern slavery. Neither have any right to remain in the UK. Both are being sought by the Home Office in relation to their immigration status."
Sheriff Tim Niven-Smith remanded both men in custody for the preparation of social work reports and warned them to expect to be jailed for a considerable period of time.
He noted that an assessment on their background had been carried out already and it had been ruled that neither of the duo had been the victims of human trafficking.
"They are often subject to threats and intimidation and are often little more than slaves for their ultimate masters," he said. "You are not in that position.
"There requires to be a crystal clear message that courts in Scotland will not tolerate criminal gangs, from wherever they might originate, weaving their way into the fabric of our society and cultivating or distributing drugs, which you both did on a commercial scale.
"Deterrence is an important thing for the court to consider in the length of sentence, it being inevitable in both your cases that the court shall sentence you both to imprisonment."
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