Southampton home converted to cannabis factory (From Daily Echo)

Southampton home converted to cannabis factory

11:20am Monday 14th December 2009 in

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HE claimed he had only popped in to use the loo.

But when Van Pham emerged from an upstairs lavatory, he was only wearing a T-shirt and a pair of shorts.

The rest of his clothing was in a pile at the bottom of the stairs.

Pham was arrested when police carried out house-to-house inquiries after a suspected burglary at a property around the corner.

However, when they entered the back garden of the three-bedroom detached house in Southampton, they could smell cannabis and found it had been converted into a cannabis factory.

They seized 111 pots containing the remnants of cannabis plants in two rooms, 210 other small plants growing in a third room and a large amount of the drug drying on the floor. Scales and plastic bags were also found, said prosecutor Rachael Robertson.

Pham told police he had a debt of £4,000 and had been driven to Southampton the same day to collect something, but he didn’t know what it was or where he was taking it.

He said he had taken off his clothes when he entered the house in Rampart Road, Bitterne, to use the lavatory so he wouldn't get them dirty.

His fingerprints however were found at a similarly converted house in Guildford where almost 400 plants were found growing in five rooms.

The plants at both properties would have produced a yield of more than £170,000 on the drugs market, said Ms Robertson.

Jurors at Southampton Crown Court found Pham, 33, of no fixed abode, guilty of two counts of being concerned in the production of cannabis.

He was remanded in custody to be sentenced on January 12.