Tochigi police have re-arrested a 33-year-old Vietnamese guy for allegedly running a pretty serious grow-op out of his house.
Pham Dinh Ngoc lives in Ashikaga City and wasn’t working. Officers say he had 207 cannabis plants going at his place in Yamakawacho. They found the setup in July while searching the house on a different case. Along with the plants they seized about 2,900 grams of dried marijuana — street value around 14.5 million yen.
He got arrested first for possessing the stuff with intent to sell. Then they hit him again for overstaying his visa.
Ngoc is denying the important parts. He admits he was growing plants, but claims he didn’t know it was marijuana and it wasn’t for money. “There is no mistake that I was growing plants, but I didn’t know it was marijuana. It was not for profit,” he told investigators.
Police aren’t buying it. They think this was a commercial operation meant for the street and they’re still digging.
Japan does not mess around with cannabis, and 200 plants plus nearly three kilos of dried product is not a “I just like gardening” situation in most people’s eyes. Whether the “I didn’t know” line holds up is going to be the interesting part of this one.