Craig Wells: Kangaroo Flat dad turned home into drug den in ‘double life’

A Bendigo father and businessman who led a secret “double life” as he turned his family home into a drug den, has been sentenced in court.

Craig Wells was sentenced to four years and five months in prison by Melbourne County Court on Wednesday for cultivating a commercial quantity of cannabis in his family’s Kangaroo Flat property. Photo Jeremy Piper

A Bendigo father’s secret “double life” has been exposed in court, where the businessman’s hard-drinking, drug-addled gambling alter-ego, which he kept hidden from his family, was revealed.

Craig Wells was sentenced to four years and five months in prison by Melbourne County Court on Wednesday for cultivating a commercial quantity of cannabis in his family’s Kangaroo Flat property.

The court heard the 50-year-old man told police he turned his home into a seedy drug den in 2019 to save his family from being murdered over his crippling drug and gambling debts.

Police became suspicious of the then 48-year-old Bendigo businessman in late May 2019 after an unusually high electricity reading at the family’s second property at Kangaroo Flat.

When police raided the property in an early morning search on Thursday July 4 they found a pants-less Wells surrounded by his illegal horticultural project.

Officers unearthed a massive cannabis haul, with four rooms housing 88 plants with various grow lamps, fans and drainage systems set-up.

Nine ziplock bags with green vegetable matter and another bag containing cannabis plant seeds were seized.

Police found $1000 in a paper bag left in the kitchen.

A mystery switch was located in the roof cavity of the bathroom, and Wells told officers he did not know what it did.

As he was being arrested Wells asked officers he could “put on a pair of trousers”.

Officers searched the pants before he could get dressed and found another wad of $1000 in cash.

Police then turned on the family home, where they found a locked briefcase with $5000 bundled in $50 notes, two firearms and ammunition.

A total of $7005 in cash was seized as it was suspected to be the proceeds of crime.

A Powercor electricity company investigator looked over the property and discovered an illegal metre bypass circuit, which had sucked up an estimated $18,166.87 worth of power in three months.

The court heard the 50-year-old father told police he started growing the plants to “stay alive and pay debts”.

Wells said he would “end up dead” if he revealed players in the Bendigo region drug network.

“I’ve got no money. I have no way out,” Wells told police.

“I don’t want it to blow back on my family.

“Someone is going to hurt me or my family.”

On April 28, 2021 Wells was convicted by a jury for cultivating the drugs.

In June, his barrister, Shane Gardner, said despite growing 74.81kg of cannabis, three times the commercial trafficking limit, his client showed considerable “criminal naivety”.

Mr Gardner said Wells had no prior convictions and was “without blemish” while his drug production scheme was operating in a house registered under his own name.

Mr Garnder said Wells was a self-made family man, having owned several businesses, including an Apollo Bay caravan park, a Wendy‘s Milk Bar and the Lansell Lotto and News.

The court heard the Bendigo man was most recently running his own lawn mowing business when he was busted dealing with a weed of a different variety.

Mr Gardner said Wells admitted to using ice and cannabis and had underlying gambling and alcohol problems as a “form of escapism”.

“Your honour might imagine how a good man can find himself in the situation he has,” Mr Gardner told Judge Amanda Chambers.

On Wednesday August 11, Judge Chambers said the Bendigo father had led a “double life”.

She said his “addictive personality style” contributed to him, at one stage, drinking half a bottle of vodka a night and losing increasingly larger amounts in poker nights.

Judge Chambers said Wells did not reveal his debts or his drug cultivation project to his family.

She said his crimes were not motivated by greed but by his spiralling addiction, for which he was seeking treatment while in custody.

Judge Chambers sentenced him, after he was found guilty by a jury for cultivating a commercial quantity of a narcotic plant and theft.

She sentenced him to four years and five months in prison, with 107 days already served.

Wells faces a non-parole period of three years.