Cannabis mule caught during drug run after police officers detect pungent odour emitting from bin bags in back seat of his car
ALERT police sniffed out a Dandenong drug mule after they smelt a pungent aroma coming from his car.
South East
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THANKS to the sensitive schnozzles of our boys in blue, a cannabis runner has ended up in court.
Hoang Huynh old pleaded guilty to trafficking and proceeds of crime charges at Dandenong Magistrates’ Court yesterday which heard the 33-year-old was pulled over by police in Westall Rd, Springvale about 2pm on March 22.
When officers were checking the driver’s details, they were hit by a pungent smell coming from inside. They saw a large bin bag on the back seat, opened it and found seven carrier bags inside.
Each contained around one pound of cannabis heads, combining to make a total of around 3.2kg of the drug.
Huynh told officers he had an informal ‘job’ running cannabis from Dandenong to Blackburn, which he sometimes did twice a week.
He said after being contacted he would wait in a car park, a vehicle would pull up alongside his and someone would throw a black bag onto the back seat.
He would then drive to a predetermined location and drop off the drugs to someone else.
An envelope containing $500 in cash would then land in his letterbox.
His defence lawyer told the court Huynh’s only role was transportation and he wasn’t involved in cultivating or distributing the drugs.
He had been asked by a “friend of a friend” to do the runs, and he accepted because he needed the extra money.
Magistrate Jack Vandersteen said Huynh could be considered a ‘mule’, and was probably preyed upon for his clean record and low possibility of being caught.
But Huynh was “an integral part” of the drug operation, and something he did “for purely financial gain”, he said.
He was placed on an 18-month community corrections order and must do 300 hours of unpaid community work.
Mr Vandersteen said he would have jailed him for six months if he had not pleaded guilty, and was warned a repeat would likely end up with him behind bars for a long time.