TRENTON – Attorney General Jeffrey S. Chiesa announced that a man who formerly lived in Port Monmouth, N.J., pleaded guilty today to leading a narcotics network that was responsible for the largest indoor marijuana growing operation ever taken down by law enforcement in New Jersey.

Tuan Ahn Dang, 38, formerly of Port Monmouth, N.J., pleaded guilty today to a first-degree charge of leader of a narcotics trafficking network before Superior Court Judge Francis Hodgson in Ocean County.  In pleading guilty, Dang admitted that he led an international drug trafficking syndicate that was growing a $10 million crop of marijuana inside five rental houses in New Jersey.  Under the plea agreement, the state will recommend that Dang be sentenced to 20 years in state prison, including 10 years without possibility of parole.

His girlfriend, Ngoc H. Bui, 38, of Old Bridge, pleaded guilty today to a charge of maintaining or operating a marijuana production facility before Judge Hodgson.  The state will recommend that she be sentenced to five years in prison, including two years of parole ineligibility. Judge Hodgson scheduled sentencing for Dang for June 14, and sentencing for Bui for Oct. 1.

Deputy Attorney General Russell Curley prosecuted the defendants and took the guilty pleas for the Division of Criminal Justice Gangs & Organized Crime Bureau.  The charge was the result of a joint investigation by the New Jersey State Police, Monroe Township Police Department, Division of Criminal Justice and additional local, county and federal law enforcement agencies.

“By leading a criminal network that grew a $10 million indoor crop of marijuana, Dang was fostering large-scale illicit drug trafficking and all of the secondary crimes that go with it,” said Attorney General Chiesa. “We’ve ensured that he’ll face a long prison term as a drug kingpin.”

“This unprecedented marijuana growing operation was detected not through a smoking gun, but through a smoking chimney, thanks to an alert Monroe Township police officer,” said Director Elie Honig of the Division of Criminal Justice. “When the officer caught a member of the drug network burning marijuana stems, the arrest launched a major, multi-agency investigation.”

The investigation began when Thu N. Nguyen, 47, a naturalized Canadian citizen, was arrested on Feb. 17, 2010, at a home where he lived on Spotswood-Englishtown Road in Monroe Township, Middlesex County, after Monroe Police Officer Thomas Lucasiewicz smelled smoke from burning marijuana stems coming from the chimney.  Officers of the Monroe Police and State Police executed a search warrant and found 1,046 marijuana plants growing in the house. 

The investigation led to the indictment on Nov. 10, 2010, of Dang, Nguyen, Bui and Tin Pham, 44, formerly of Sayreville, N.J., all Vietnamese nationals. Nguyen was charged with first-degree narcotics offenses, second-degree conspiracy, second-degree money laundering, and other crimes. Pham was charged in a separate indictment for allegedly fraudulently obtaining $370,000 in mortgage loans to purchase a home used to grow marijuana. The charges against Nguyen and Pham are pending and they are presumed innocent until proven guilty.

Ten search warrants were executed in February 2010 by numerous law enforcement agencies at locations in three counties.  The searches revealed five rented houses with large marijuana grows underway, and a sixth house in Barnegat where a marijuana production facility was in the process of being dismantled.  In the following searches, authorities seized 3,370 growing plants, 130 pounds of harvested marijuana, and $66,000 in cash, along with a vast array of indoor growing, lighting and irrigation equipment:

Attorney General Chiesa commended the following agencies for conducting the investigation:

• Monroe Township Police Department (Middlesex County)
• New Jersey State Police
• Marijuana Eradication Squad
• Hit Team North
• Street Gang Central Unit
• Drug Trafficking North, South and Central Units
• Troop “C” Criminal Investigations Office
• Crime Scene Investigation Unit
• New Jersey Division of Criminal Justice
• Middlesex County Prosecutor’s Office
• Monmouth County Prosecutor’s Office
• Barnegat Police Department
• Manalapan Police Department
• Sayreville Police Department
• Stafford Township Police Department
• Old Bridge Township Police Department   
• U.S. Marshals Service
• U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)

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