A CANNABIS farmer who was tending to a crop of plants worth tens of thousands of pounds in a Carlisle house had previously committed two almost identical offences.

Fifty-two-year-old Vietnamese national Hoanh Vo was caught after police raided the property in Harold Street and discovered a cultivation operation over two floors, with two crops consisting of almost 240 plants.

At Carlisle Crown Court, the defendant, who is in the country illegally, admitted producing the class B drug.

Prosecutor Andrew Evans outlined the facts. After being tipped off about a potential cannabis growing operation in the property, police arrived on July 19, when an officer knocked on the door and peered through the letter box.

“The officer spotted somebody was inside the house, this defendant,” said the prosecutor. “They forced open the door and confirmed that the house was being used as a cannabis farm across two floors.”

Police recovered 134 mature cannabis plants and a second crop of 103 more juvenile crops. If harvested, the two crops together would have produced more than 13 kilos of the drug, worth tens of thousands of pounds.

“The electricity supply for the growing operation had been illegally diverted,” said Mr Evans. “The defendant was taken out of the property and his fingerprints were found on the fuse-box cover.

“He told the police that he was in debt to a Mafia gang and had been since 2006.”

Vo said he had returned to Vietnam in 2010 but then returned to the UK and after a period of homelessness in Leeds he was “captured” by those he owed money to and sent to the property in Harold Street (pictured).

(Image: Google)

Any money he earned was to be deducted from the debt he owed. The defendant said he came to the UK illegally in the back of a lorry.

He had two previous convictions for the same offence, the court heard.

But Vo accepted he was free to come and go from the Carlisle house where the cannabis farm was set up. For his last cannabis cultivation offence, committed in a former Teesside bank, he was jailed for 24 months.

On that occasion, 216 plants were recovered.

Marion Weir, defending, told the court: “He’d accrued debts in Vietnam and came to this country in July, knowing what he did was illegal. He was not going to make a profit and was simply trying to repay his debt.”

In response to a question from Judge Nicholas Barker, who asked why Vo was not deported after the Teesside offence, Miss Weir added: “He made an application for asylum.

“He has a wife and children in Vietnam and a mother who is extremely unwell. He does not want to remain in this country any longer. It’s likely the sentence this court will impose will result in his deportation.”

Judge Barker told Vo: “This is the third time you will have been sentenced for being involved in the production of cannabis. You know full well it is a criminal offence in this country; and you know what happens if you are caught doing it because you were locked up and given prison sentences in 2010 and 2020.”

The offending involved the production of cannabis on a commercial scale, though the judge accepted that Vo acted “under instructions.” But Judge Barker rejected the notion that Vo was exploited, and unable to choose what he did.

The judge told Vo: “You knew what you were doing. You could have sought assistance, and you didn’t. To have such a catalogue of offending whilst being in this country illegally means that your continued presence here is undesirable.”

He jailed Vo for 27 months.

Any decision on the defendant’s likely deportation would be for the Home Office, not any court.