DOPE smoker Robbie Moloney has scored more than half a million dollars from the state government - thanks to a mind-blowing bungle by the justice system.
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A County Court judge has ordered the state to cough up $320,000 plus an estimated $200,000 in legal costs to Moloney, who lives near Nirranda.
Moloney, 44, was this week celebrating his windfall by relaxing in a hammock at the mudbrick home which is at the centre of the extraordinary saga. The house on Mathiesons Road was confiscated under proceeds of crime laws after Moloney was charged with harvesting 26 marijuana plants, weighing more than 50kg.
Moloney had begun cultivating the plants on the banks of Whiskey Creek near Nirranda in 2007.
In April last year, Moloney harvested the crop and was intercepted by police who claimed they found more than 50 kilograms.
Moloney said the plants were just for personal use.
He said he had been a dope smoker for 25 years and used up to three grams a day.
He pleaded guilty in the Warrnambool County Court to cultivating a commercial quantity of marijuana and possessing a drug of dependence, but trafficking charges were dropped.
The bungle came when the Office of Public Prosecutions, which had applied for Moloney's house to be seized because of the serious offence of trafficking, tripped up by failing to formally acknowledge that the charges had subsequently been dropped.
Moloney's lawyers decided Moloney had been treated unfairly and appealed to the County Court.
Now County Court Judge Frank Saccardo has rectified the situation - ordering the $320,000 windfall to Moloney for the wrongful seizure of his home, plus the costs.
Mr Moloney said that he was sick of the "bureaucratic bullshit'' but that he would use the money to pay off a bank loan used to build his house on three hectares gifted from his parents.
Mr Moloney had been ordered to leave his house within 60 days so that it could be sold, but he hasn't gone anywhere.
"I never left the joint,'' he said.
The OPP is considering an appeal and the process could take a year.
Either way, Moloney is staying put.
"I took them on because they had completely done the wrong thing,'' he said.
"Yes, I smoke dope but I am not involved in trafficking. There were no text messages, phone calls, scales or other drug paraphernalia - nothing to indicate trafficking.
''They just went through with it, heavy handed.
"The judge (Frank Saccardo) said that on the two charges I actually faced, the house would never have been confiscated.
"The OPP might have been better to play by the rules,'' Moloney said at his home.
"This has cost the state a heap of money and me a heap of grief - it was all unnecessary.''
