When Belfast Telegraph reporter Sam McBride went investigating a massive cannabis operation in Hillsborough he was confronted by an angry poultry farmer, Clive Weir.
Not only did Weir deny any knowledge of the weed growing in his shed, tended to by two Vietnamese men, he angrily lambasted the PSNI for not catching the perpetrators.
Given the shed was eight metres from his back door, his denials seemed ridiculous and eventually he plead guilty.
The well-off farmer has now been jailed over the drugs and the 56-year-old father of six will spend at least a year and a half behind bars.
The PSNI officer who put Weir behind bars said she’d never encountered a person publicly denouncing police “when it’s kind of pretty obvious they were involved in the crime under investigation”.
She said somebody approached Weir, and made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.
That somebody was a Chinese ‘Triad-like’ crime gang.
Sam McBride joins Ciarán Dunbar to tell this unlikely story.
The County Down poultry farmer, the Chinese gangsters, and the cannabis haul
