skunk farm Benefit paid

[bongme]

hi

May 17 2002

Malcolm Pickering, Evening Gazette

 

A Teesside man claimed housing benefit on a home he had rented purely to use as a cannabis farm, Teesside Crown Court was told.

Andrew Gray, 30, of Derwent Street, Hartlepool, pleaded guilty to possessing cannabis with intent to supply and cultivating cannabis - both on October 18 last year.

He was given 100 hours community punishment combined with a community rehabilitation order for two years.

Prosecutor Ian West said the charges arose out of a police raid on the Derwent Street property where they found the front bedroom of the terraced house set up as a complex cannabis farm with lighting and irrigation equipment, heaters and fans together with 20 growing plants.

In the back bedroom, the product of an earlier crop - 858 grams of "usable skunk" - was laid out drying on newspaper.

Arrested and interviewed, Mr West said Gray told the police that while he claimed the house as his address he had rented it with the express purpose of setting up the cannabis farm and was claiming housing benefit for it. In reality, he told the officers, he spent most of his time living with his parents.

He claimed he had bought the plants for £5 each and had borrowed the equipment on the basis that the owner would share the crop.

Mr West said that while there was no specific value put on the drugs found by the police, it was suggested that each plant could be worth a potential £1,000.

Gray was said to have one previous drugs conviction for possession of cannabis.

Defence barrister Aisha Wadoodi told the court that Gray had become involved in using cannabis to alleviate the arthritis from which he suffered.

But, she said he realised this could not justify growing the drug on the scale he was doing in the house.

Miss Wadoodi said that Gray came from "a decent background" and was extremely distressed at the prospect of his parents finding out about the case.

She said that today will be his mother's 60th birthday. She said his parents were abroad on holiday and he had not informed them what was happening because he did not want to spoil it for them.

 

Bongme

[Mono]

Nice one...

Unlucky getting confiscated, bit silly inviting attention by doing benefit fraud on the addy you use....

The sentence warms my cockles, particularly when you look at his set up..(bigger than mine, and many if not most others here), his background, remote location, whole room, three and a half bars of drying product......

Pleading guilty probly helped there....

Mono...x

[chip]

Same here mono, it was a nice surprise to see he got such a lenient sentence/punishment.

Maybe the tide has turned?

Chip