Cannabis worth £9m transported to NI hidden in pallets of flooring by Manchester crime gang

Belfast Telegraph

2 days ago

Two Chinese nationals who smuggled cannabis worth £9m hidden in wooden flooring from Manchester to Northern Ireland have been sentenced to over three years imprisonment each.
Yudong Ouyang (32) and Gary Hon (26), who were living in the English city, had been discovered cultivating large crops of cannabis.
An investigation by the National Crime Agency (NCA) found they had been using HGVs to transport the Class B drug by ferry to NI where they knew they could charge a premium price.
The pair were using encrypted messaging platforms between June 2019 and February 2020 where they organised secreting the drugs in large pallets of wooden flooring.
The inner pallets had been hollowed out to create a void where they could hide the drugs before organising transport using a legitimate shipping agent who was unaware of the illegal commodity.
NCA investigators found there were up to 38 deliveries made by the group from Manchester to Belfast in the nine-month period.
Ouyang and Hon sent messages in Mandarin and translations showed that the contents discussed the cannabis trade, warehouse rentals and travel to NI.
Other messages discussed how to hide the drugs and how they could secrete money when they returned to England.:
"I put the d[drug] money on me, not in the car, so the sniffing dog could not get the smell," one stated.
Phone evidence also showed Ouyang regularly sent photos of cannabis, cannabis farms, or selfies of him at the farms to the gang. His fingerprints and an invoice in his name were found at a cannabis farm raided as part of the operation.
Officers said they pieced together messages and phone calls with CCTV movements that showed how the group were in touch with each other before attending storage units to move pallets.
Despite attempting to appear as a legitimate business, investigators found that pallets were occasionally shipped back from Northern Ireland to Manchester and other locations in England where it is believed the hollow void could be used again for a further export.
The standard weight of a pallet of the type used by Ouyang and Hon was 1,000kg.
Evidence showed declarations made by the group always weighed the pallet at 1200 kilos, though it is believed 50 kilos of cannabis was moved in each delivery.
Contact details on invoices from the legitimate storage businesses were also linked back to the men.
Hon was arrested by NCA officers in February 2022 and Ouyang was detained in December 2023 before they appeared before Manchester Crown Court.
Ouyang pleaded guilty to conspiracy to supply class B drugs in January 2024 and Hon pleaded guilty to the same offence on 25 June, 2025.
They were sentenced at the same court on Monday.
Hon received a prison sentence of three years and one month and Ouyang received a sentence of three years and six months.'
Barry Vinall, NCA operations manager, said: "Ouyang and Hon were key players in this large scale cannabis supply operation, producing up to £9 million in profit and working closely with a wider group.
"They attempted to make their operations appear legitimate but investigators unravelled their vast communications and movements showing they would often transport pallets back across to England so they could be reused for further importations.
"This organised crime group targeted Northern Ireland as their market where they knew their drugs would attract a premium price.
"Gangs like those run by Ouyang and Hon fuel an industry that sees people transported to the UK to work illegally in cannabis farms and taking action against those involved in these crimes is a priority for the NCA."
Two other men, Luis Ieong and Ming Liang He were convicted in Northern Ireland after being arrested in Belfast in January 2020.
They were stopped by PSNI officers while driving a vehicle carrying almost 11 kilos of cannabis and CCTV showed they had been at a storage unit in Belfast where boxes of flooring with the internal cavity were kept. A further 35.5 kilos of cannabis was found at the unit alongside £70,000 in cash.
They were sentenced to 13 months' imprisonment each in December 2020.