Pot Growing Operation Lands Former Port Monmouth Resident 20-Year Jail Sentence

A former Port Monmouth resident received a 20-year in prison sentence Friday for leading a narcotics network responsible for the largest indoor marijuana growing operation ever shut down by police in New Jersey, the state attorney general's office announced.

Tuan Ahn Dang, 38, who lived on Wood Avenue in Port Monmouth during the time he was growing marijuana, pleaded guilty in April to a first-degree charge of leader of a narcotics trafficking network before Superior Court Judge Francis Hodgson in Ocean County.

Dang admitted that he led an international drug trafficking syndicate growing a $10 million crop of marijuana inside five rental houses in New Jersey, according to the attorney general's office. 

His sentence, set by Judge Hodgson, includes 10 years of parole ineligibility. 

“Marijuana production on this scale fuels drug trafficking in our communities and all of the secondary crimes and violence that accompany it. This sentence reflects the serious nature of his offense,” Acting Attorney General Hoffman said in the release.

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. Her sentencing is scheduled for Oct. 1. 

Deputy Attorney General Russell Curley prosecuted the case for the Division of Criminal Justice Gangs & Organized Crime Bureau. Deputy Attorney General Michael Klein handled the sentencing. 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 agencies.

“This was an outstanding law enforcement operation from start to finish – from the heads-up police work of the Monroe Township officer who initiated it, to the far-reaching investigation involving all levels of law enforcement, to the aggressive prosecution that secured this lengthy prison sentence for the leader of the drug network,” said Director Elie Honig of the Division of Criminal Justice in the release.

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, which was kept at a high temperature. 

The investigation led to the indictment on Nov. 10, 2010, of Dang, Nguyen, Bui and Tin Pham, 44, formerly of Sayreville, 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.