Immigrant who landed in UK on a dinghy caught tending to £63,000 Wakefield cannabis factory
An illegal immigrant who owed £10,000 to smugglers for bringing him to the UK in a dinghy was found working as a gardener at a cannabis farm.
Police raided the property at South Kirkby in Wakefield and found Arbi Koldashi tending to the grow that had more than 140 plants.
Prosecutor Jennifer Gatland told Leeds Crown Court said officers went to the house on Saxon Mount shortly before 9am on July 31 armed with a search warrant.
Koldashi answered the door and was the sole occupant. Officers found four grow rooms containing the usual set up of lights, fans and transformers.
There were 60 mature plants and 85 saplings. The electricity had been bypassed to prevent detection about the amount of energy being used to grow the plants.
Experts predicted the farm was capable of producing around 6.3kg of the drug, with a street value of £63,000.
Koldashi, 41, was interviewed by police and said he had been at the property for a month and was tasked with watering the plants.
He said he was put to work to pay off the debt he owed the traffickers who brought him across the sea from Albania on a dinghy two years ago.
He has no previous convictions and admitted a charge of the production of cannabis.
Mitigating, Eddison Flint said Koldashi had been “full and frank” with police and said there had been a “degree of pressure” to work at the drugs factory.
He said the Home Office had already been in touch with Koldashi, who was on remand at HMP Leeds, to say he will be deported once he is released.
Mr Flint said: “He wants to go home and live a crime-free life.”
The judge, Recorder David Gordon, jailed him for 20 months.