Sheng Dong Pan given eight years with final four suspended

This report is a localnews.ie summary based on public court reporting and records; sources are listed below.

At Dublin Circuit Criminal Court, Judge Patricia Ryan gave Sheng Dong Pan an eight-year prison term, suspending the final four years and requiring him to keep the peace for three years after release. The sentence was backdated to 23 July 2013, when he entered custody.

Pan pleaded guilty to cultivating cannabis. The cultivation offence took place on 23 July 2013. He also admitted possessing cannabis for sale or supply, having initially denied that more serious charge and obtained a trial date. The report placed his late plea in the preceding week. The proceedings were reported on 12 December 2014.

The report described a seizure at a Clondalkin Industrial Estate unit comprising more than 16,000 grammes of cannabis material alongside 496 cannabis plants. The estimated value of the cannabis seized was €725,828.

Pan’s account to gardaí was that he had moved in a few weeks earlier, after the plants were already there, without knowing they were cannabis. He described cooking as his main work but acknowledged occasionally watering the plants and assisting with harvesting and packing. He said others ran the operation and collected the cannabis.

In mitigation, Judge Patricia Ryan considered his previously clear record, the difficulties he faced in custody as a foreign national and a skin condition affecting his nervous system. A letter from Pan conveyed remorse. He wrote that he had accepted work as a chef, initially mistook the plants for Chinese herbs and understood the growhouse role only when he felt it was too late.