WOODFORD GREEN/CHINGFORD: Men convicted of planning raid on drug dealer's £5 million cannabis stash (From East London and West Essex Guardian Series)

WOODFORD GREEN/CHINGFORD: Men convicted of planning raid on drug dealer's £5 million cannabis stash

4:22pm Wednesday 14th December 2011 in Your Local Areas By Joe Curtis

FOUR men have been convicted of trying to steal a tonne of cannabis from a drug dealer’s safe house.

Mark Bines, 28, from Woodford Green, and Kevin Hunter, 18, of Chingford, were among the four who were caught by police en route to an Essex drug dealer’s £5 million cannabis stash in July this year.

The pair, along with two men from Poplar, were in two vans on their way to the safe house when they were stopped in Margretting Road in Galleywood on July 6.

They were found with balaclavas, hammers, handcuffs and masks.

Hunter, of Churchwood Terrace, was also found guilty at Southwark Crown Court on Tuesday, December 13, of having a loaded gun which police believe would have been used in the gang’s planned raid on the safe house.

Police found £5,000 cash and images of the safe house on a computer at an address linked to Bines, of The Rodings, and Detective Inspector Bruce South said the Metropolitan Police had averted what could have been a violent crime.

The owner of the safe house, 56-year-old David Fearn, was arrested and sentenced to four years in jail for conspiracy to supply drugs.

The safe house, whose address the Guardian is waiting to receive from the Met, also contained 50kg of amphetamines and mixing agents.

Bines and Hunter, along with Aaron Morris, 22, of Fawe Street, Poplar, and Mark Morris, 37, of East India Dock Road, Poplar, are due to be sentenced on January 27 2012.

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