By Graeme Strachan

A WOMAN living next door to a cannabis factory in a house in Broughty Ferry told last night how she believes she was duped into accepting money to ensure the illegal operation was kept secret.

The neighbour—who asked not to be named—was given cash by two Chinese men to repair an adjoining fence that blew down as hurricane-strength gales battered Dundee earlier this month.

The woman said that, with hindsight, she believes they wanted the fence back up quickly to avoid arousing any suspicion of the illegal operation that was going on behind the drawn blinds.

She said it was hard to believe the house next door in leafy Portree Avenue could have been an outpost of a Far Eastern drugs syndicate.

Officers acting on intelligence raided the smart, semi-detached villa on Friday and discovered a large number of plants in the rooms upstairs.

It was the second such seizure in the Dundee area in a matter of days.

No one was at the address at the time and efforts are ongoing to trace those behind the factory.

“They just seemed like law- abiding people; we had no idea of what was going on next door,” said the neighbour.

“When there was the bad storms, two of them came across and offered us money to get the fence put back up as soon as possible.

“We just thought they were being good neighbours by offering to pay for the repair, but my partner said that, in hindsight, they wanted it put back up quickly to keep what was going on secret.

“The blinds were always shut but we just assumed they worked shifts. It’s a nice quiet area with lots of families and you don’t expect something like this to be happening.

“We’re really shocked by this—it just shows it can happen anywhere.”

A team of officers wearing gloves and masks to protect them from spores has concluded the process of bagging up the illegal crop and gathering evidence from within the house.

Forensics officers have also been carrying out investigations in a bid to track down those responsible.

Detective sergeant Adrian Robertson of the drugs squad said the house had been rented out by a private landlord who had no idea the property was being used as an illegal dope den.

“We’ve had a full search and a forensics team in the house removing a significant amount of potential evidence from the property,” he said.

“Now comes the painstaking task of going through that to gain as much evidence as we can as to who may have been responsible for using the property for such activities.

“We recovered specialist cannabis-growing equipment, including a large quantity of lights as well as transformers used to boost the electricity supply. It’s been a big shock for the landlord, who had no idea this was going on.

“Inquiries will be continuing to establish who it was that signed the tenancy agreement; unfortunately, it’s unlikely they will have used their real names.”

DS Robertson said the cannabis cultivation was done upstairs and the ground floor looked normal.

“What we normally find is that every spare bit of space in the house is given over to the growing of plants, so that was slightly unusual,” he said.

“But we can’t discount that this may have been deliberate to make the appearance of the house look normal when people came knocking. It is recognised that this sort of activity is run by organised crime gangs.

“The people living in the house were probably being exploited.

“We want to try and follow the link back and apprehend the criminals running this operation.”

Last year, more than six factories were discovered in Tayside and four men appeared in court on Thursday following a raid on an alleged cannabis operation in Liff.

Inquiries into a recovery in Methven, Perthshire, last week are also continuing.

Cannabis factories are hidden in houses with an irrigation system, reflective foil on the walls and ventilation ducts sliced into the ceilings.

The electricity meter is bypassed to tap into the large amounts of energy needed to power the lamps without raising the suspicions of suppliers.

Indoor cannabis farms, which can produce up to £250,000 of the class C drug each year, are appearing in quiet residential streets throughout the country in unprecedented numbers, authorities say.