Van Tan Nguyen guilty of smuggling half a million dollars of cannabis into NT

Police have busted a migrant smuggling half a million dollars worth of drugs into the Northern Territory from South Australia as part of an international drug syndicate.

Van Tan Nguyen was busted with 36kg of weed. Picture: iStock

Police have busted a migrant smuggling half a million dollars worth of weed into the Northern Territory as part of an international drug syndicate.

Vietnamese man Van Tan Nguyen pleaded guilty to supplying commercial quantities of cannabis, and possessing more than $55,000 cash for supplying the drug.

In February last year the then 47-year-old dad was living in South Australia on a working visa when he collected 36kg of cannabis in Adelaide.

He packed the drug – with an estimated street value between $395,000 and $474,000 – into a hired Toyota Prado and drove it up to the Top End.

Nguyen met his co-offender, a 54-year-old man also living in South Australia, at a caravan park in Virginia to hand over the drugs.

The 54-year-old had arrived in the Territory a week earlier to identify potential customers.

Police had been covertly watching him, and that day the 54-year-old was observed sending an express post package from Palmerston to an address in Dandenong, Victoria, containing $45,050.

On the night of March 1 police tracked the Toyota Prado travelling north through Adelaide River, and just after midnight found the car stopped on the side of the road near Noonamah.

A search of the car found the 36kg of cannabis, and Nguyen was arrested.

Arriving at the caravan park about 1am, a raid uncovered several mobile phones, $10,000 in cash, and a handwritten drug ledger totalling $258,300 in the co-offender’s wallet.

Nguyen was sentenced at the NT Supreme Court. Picture: Pema Tamang Pakhrin

NT Supreme Court Justice John Burns rejected defence counsel’s claim Nguyen was just a courier in the drug operation, found to be a regional arm of an international drug syndicate directed from Melbourne.

“The enterprise in which you were involved was relatively sophisticated and clearly premeditated and planned,” Justice Burns said.

“Your role was crucial to the success of the enterprise.”

Justice Burns said Nguyen’s moral culpability for the offending was very high.

“The supply and consequent use of cannabis in the Northern Territory is a cause of social instability and hardship,” he said.

“Those who commit serious offences, either of dishonesty or violence, frequently claim to be under the influence of cannabis.”

Nguyen had been in Australia since 2018, and Justice Burns noted he was at substantial risk of deportation due to the offending.

He was sentenced to five years and 10 months priosn, with a non-parole period of three years and five months.