Hoang Tran, Xuan Binh Tran, Thanh Chi Nguyen and Hai Ngoc Nguyen sentenced to a combined 30 years for role in $10 million drug syndicate
An Adelaide cannabis syndicate was riding high until their multiple suburban grow houses were discovered. This is what police found inside.
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In a nondescript shed 100m off Port Wakefield Rd, multiple men would routinely gather to look at handwritten words scrawled in permanent marker on a hastily erected wall.
Speaking their native Vietnamese, the men would discuss what was being grown in the makeshift rooms at one end of the industrial property.
Each room contained a crop of marijuana plants, given names such as Mighty Bloom, Budmeister, Hedmaster, The Stuff and Terpinator to distinguish the individual batches.
But the crop wasn’t being tended to in just Waterloo Corner.
As police dismantled the cannabis syndicate they found nine more grow houses hidden in rental properties in the suburbs of Adelaide.
None of the houses were lived in but many contained tooth brushes, empty water bottles and food scraps from the people who had worked there tending the crops.
By the end of the operation between February 2018 to September 2019, police located and dismantled a $10 million drug crop made up of 1640 cannabis plants in varying states of maturity.
They also seized 71kg of dried cannabis and $72,065 in cash from two other houses.
The setups in the shed and the nine grow houses were near identical: bamboo poles to prop up the fledgling plants, the same brand of globe and shade to run the hydroponic setups.
The power in many of the houses had been illegally diverted.
The four men arrested for their role in the syndicate have remarkably similar backgrounds.
All came to Australia from Vietnam as young men seeking to further their education and better their lives.
In Australia they were wooed by the promises of more cash than they were earning in menial jobs, enough to sustain themselves or to send back to families in need.
While the four men were jailed on Friday for a total of more than 30 years, the District Court Judge Joanne Tracey said the “bigger bosses” behind the operation were either interstate or in locations unknown.
Hoang Tran, 29, came to Australia on a student visa to study business accounting at the University of Adelaide.
After a failed attempt to run a farming business, Hoang Tran drifted into the sights of the cannabis syndicate and became involved in the Klemzig and Ovingham grow houses.
Judge Tracey accepted Hoang Tran played no organisational role in the syndicate but noted he was trusted enough to have keys to one of the grow houses.
He wrote a letter of remorse about the offending saying he was deeply ashamed and feared for his wife, whom he met in Australia, if he was deported.
He was sentenced to four years, four months and 26 days in prison with a three-year, six-month and nine-day non-parole period.
Xuan Binh Tran, 27, arrived in Australia at the age of 18 on a student visa but accrued $30,000 in gambling debts.
“You agreed to be the gardener in this enterprise having never met the ‘bigger bosses’ who you understood lived interstate,” Judge Tracey said.
Binh Tran was tied to Flinders Park, Waterloo Corner and Modbury Heights grow-houses as well as 26.5kg of cannabis and $27,315 at an Angle Park property.
He was sentenced to nine years, two months and 13 days with a non-parole period of seven years, four months and 13 days.
Judge Tracey said Binh Tran was certain to be deported after his prison sentence had been completed.
Hai Ngoc Nguyen, 32, came to Australia to improve his English and to try to make enough money to send home to pay off his mother’s gambling debts.
When he arrived in Melbourne he was asked if wanted to make some money and quickly joined the syndicate.
Ngoc Nguyen was involved in caring for the crops and leasing the grow houses as well as taking part in the “financial aspects of the harvested cannabis”.
He was sentenced to ten years, nine months and 19 days imprisonment with a non-parole period of eight years, seven months and 22 days.
Thanh Chi Nguyen, 29, came to Australia on a student visa to study English and IT but he ran out of money part way through the degree and his visa was cancelled.
Despite being in the country illegally, he continued to work for the syndicate, erecting the bamboo lattice to support the growing cannabis plants.
He was sentenced to five years, seven months and 28 days in prison with a four year, six months and nine day non-parole period.
Judge Tracey said he too would be deported at the end of his sentence.
Watching silently from the body of the court during sentencing, members of the Australian Border Force took note of the sentence and when the men would eligible for deportation.
Two men who arrived at the Waterloo Corner site as police were raiding it in August 2019 were taken into custody and have already been deported.
The money, drugs and equipment were all surrendered to the Crown.
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