Leeds students jailed for million-pound global cannabis importation scheme

Jinshuo Dong and Jingshu Wang recruited students in the city to receive parcels filled with the drug, delivered to their addresses via the postal service.

Leeds Crown Court heard that the parcels, each usually containing 1.5kg of cannabis, were posted in Canada and addressed to various students in halls including The Iconinc Glassworks on Cardigan Road and The Terry Frost Building on Whitelock Street.

Dong, 24, and Wang, 28, who are both Chinese nationals studying in Leeds, would then collect the parcels.

They were found to have played an “instrumental and significant” part, prosecutor Austin Newman told the court.

They both admitted conspiracy to evade a prohibition on the importation of a controlled drug and were jailed this week. They had initially denied any involvement and elected for a trial, but later changed their pleas.

They have both been held on remand since their arrest.

The court heard that Border Force became aware of similarly-packaged parcels arriving from Canada, where cannabis is now legal, in October of last year.

Work between West Yorkshire Police and Border Force led them to the student buildings where the packages were often delivered.

On several occasions in April and May, the police were alerted to arriving packages which both Dong and Wang attempted to collect, but they left empty-handed on each occasion before the police could arrive.

They were later identified on CCTV footage from the halls of residence and eventually arrested at Dong’s home on East Parade in Leeds city centre.

Phones were seized and found to contain chats between the pair.

They also found evidence that they had recruited to students to “turn a blind eye” and receive the parcels through the post before they were collected by Dong and Wang.

The authorities eventually intercepted 63 parcels linked to the defendants, totalling more than 108 kgs of cannabis and with a potential street value of more than £1 million.

Mr Newman said that experts predict as low as five per cent of imported drugs are uncovered, suggesting the defendants’ involvement could have potentially run into tonnes of the drug worth up to £20 million.

Mitigating for Dong, Joseph Hart, said his client had grown up in a rural area of China and his parents had worked hard to send him to the UK to study.

He said he was “naive” and “lonely” and got involved initially with gambling when he arrived.

Mr Hart said: “He led an enormously sheltered existence, he had not been in a city before and came to this country with no real friends and no real expectation of what life would be like in this country.”

He said becoming involved in this drug enterprise gave him a “perceived glamour” and a “degree of status” among peers.

He said: “He did not appreciate quite how serious this was and got deeper and deeper involved.

“He is sorry, he is remorseful.”

For Wang, Shannon Woodley said the operation was “clearly much bigger” than the two defendants and that they were being instructed by others.

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She said Wang, like his co-accused, was naive. He was studying for a masters degree in business at Leeds University and was looking to start a PhD.

She said: “He is extremely remorseful and now understands the scale of what he was involved in.”

Judge Richard Mansell KC said the operation was a “highly-organised criminal enterprise” and said: “I have no doubt whatsoever that you knew what you were doing from the outset.”

He described their basis of plea in which there were claims of having no knowledge that their parcels contained drugs being posted as “utter nonsense”.

Both Wang, of New York Square, Leeds, and Dong were handed three years’ jail.