Pot luck: Offender happy to be busted
A property manager who leased a student flat to a cannabis syndicate says he is happy he was caught.
Michael John Kinraid, 33, appeared in the Dunedin District Court yesterday after pleading guilty to cultivating the class-C drug.
Judge Peter Rollo sentenced him to
10 months’ home detention and 300 hours’ community work.
Kinraid told Probation his arrest had been the catalyst he needed to address his addiction to cannabis.
“I’m kind of glad it happened,” he said.
“I needed something to make me stop.”
Kinraid’s job involved him working for a property business — owned by his father — which provided rental accommodation for the numerous tertiary students in Dunedin.
But one house was leased to
26-year-old farmer Dylan Pattison in March last year.
Kinraid was paid an ounce of cannabis a week instead of $400 a week in rent.
Police soon got wind of a massive cannabis cultivation taking place and intercepted communications between Pattison, Kinraid and a third man.
In July, when police executed a search warrant at the address, they found cannabis being grown in every room and in the roof space.
There were 353 plants, made from
13 different strains. If sold at $450 an ounce, the crop in the flat could have scored the men $476,550.
A police summary of facts described grow tents in all four bedrooms, each of which had a ventilation system with the air passing through a carbon filter.
The roof space was also used and a water reservoir installed in it.
Defence counsel Sarah Saunderson-Warner said her client had a long-standing addiction to cannabis but had stopped using.
Kinraid said he had noticed improvements in his short-term memory and no longer thought about the substance all the time.
Judge Rollo said the defendant had a lot to prove, especially to his father, whose business reputation would be adversely affected by his actions.
Pattison, who was also paid for his role in cannabis, was last week sentenced to 26 months in prison.
The third defendant will be sentenced in March.