When police raided a South Auckland property in 2022, they not only found hundreds of cannabis plants growing throughout the house – two Vietnamese overstayers were also discovered hiding in the roof space.
The two men, Ha Hai Dinh and Tuan Anh Mai, are both now in prison for cultivating cannabis for what a judge called a “very serious commercial enterprise”.
In addition to the Karaka property south of Auckland where they were found with 338 cannabis plants, each man had another house where he grew smaller though still significant amounts of the drug.
Police went to the Karaka property with a search warrant on September 27, 2022.
They knocked and got no response, so broke down the door and discovered a number of sealed-off rooms.
There were grow tents inside each room with heat lamps on timers, watering systems and carbon filters so that no one nearby could smell what was going on.
