A drugs kingpin who ran a network of cannabis farms across the UK making millions while posing as a Bentley-driving property developer was convicted today.
Roman Le, 37, drove around the country in his Bentley Continental, posing as a property developer surveying his empire of residential and commercial properties, even putting up scaffolding around the buildings to make it look like work was taking place.
But behind the façade, his lieutenants were busy inside the properties manufacturing huge quantities of cannabis.
Le ran at least eight cannabis farms in residential and commercial properties, as well as a storage facility housing both equipment and harvested cannabis.
He established cannabis factories across the Midlands, North West and north Lincolnshire including in a disused nightclub in Coventry, a former public house in Birmingham, and an old hotel in Lancashire.
Dramatic video footage has captured the moment numerous NCA investigators broke down the door of a former public house in Birmingham and arrested the drugs kingpin.
Lee, handcuffed, is then seen to be escorted from the premises by two officers.
In another damning clip, officers were seen pinning down two other gang members at the Big Bamboo nightclub in Coventry before placing them under arrest.
National Crime Agency (NCA) investigators had placed the gang under surveillance, watching as Le parked his Bentley Continental outside the former Big Bamboo nightclub in Coventry before heading inside.
Drone footage of this secret surveillance shows two of the hooded gang members stood outside the site, unaware they were being caught on film.
When the site was later raided, police found 1500 cannabis plants worth more than £1 million spread across three floors.
On another occasion they witnessed the gang’s operations manager Yihao Feng, 29, driving away in his Maserati sports car after visiting the Old Wellington Hotel in Clayton-le-Moors, which was later found to have more than 300 plants growing inside.
Many of the farms were staffed by Vietnamese or Albanian illegal migrants.
When the gang were arrested Feng pleaded guilty to conspiring to produce cannabis.
But Le denied the charge, claiming he was a legitimate businessman who had no knowledge that the properties were being used for cannabis.
Following an eight-day trial at Birmingham Crown Court, he was convicted today to conspiring to produce cannabis.
NCA Branch Commander Kevin Broadhead said: ‘Roman Le claimed he was a legitimate property developer, but in actual fact he fronted an organised crime gang capable of producing millions of pounds worth of cannabis.
‘While he and his co-conspirators oversaw these operations, buying and renting properties on behalf of the growers and reaping the profits, the actual people put to work in them were often exploited migrants who had been smuggled into the UK.
‘Working with policing partners we were able to prove these men were involved a sophisticated criminal enterprise.’