BANGKOK – Dried cannabis is still illegal in the Philippines, so the profit from shipping cannabis from Thailand to Manila is very high.
Pol. Maj. Gen. Panthana Nuch-cha-nart, Deputy Head of the Immigration Department, announced on April 10 the arrest of Mr. John Andrew Tiangson, 35, a Filipino national, and Ms. Ena Bianca Marie Cruz, 30, a Filipino national, on charges of “being foreigners who entered and stayed in the Kingdom with an expired permit” at the Immigration Department Office in Muang Thong Thani, Pak Kret District, Nonthaburi Province.
The arrests on April 10 came after the Immigration Bureau’s Investigation Division 1 received information from Philippine security agencies about the seizure of a large shipment of dried cannabis packed in tightly sealed packages weighing over 10 kilograms in total. The cannabis was discovered by the Philippine Bureau of Customs in late February 2024.
The usual street price for the cannabis in question after transportation to the Philippines is 1,200 pesos per gram, or about 975 baht per gram, which equates to a total value of almost 10 million baht.
The seized cannabis was shipped from a parcel delivery service in Bangkok, which is located in an area with a large Filipino population. The investigation team began to investigate the company and eventually obtained information about the senders of the package, Mr. John Andrew Tiangson and Ms. Ena Bianca Marie Cruz, a Filipino couple.
A biometric check revealed that both individuals had overstayed their visas in the Kingdom for more than 9 years. Investigators then located the couple’s home, a townhouse in Bangkok’s Prawet district, and arrested them.
In addition, the two foreigners will be blacklisted by the Immigration Bureau and banned from entering the Kingdom for ten years under the Ministry of Interior’s Order No. 1/2015 dated November 27, 2015 on banning certain foreigners from entering the Kingdom. The couple will then be deported to the Philippines for further prosecution.
