Leeds nursing-home cannabis gang jailed after police raid £450,000 operation

The six “gardeners”, who are all Albanian, were found tending to the huge operation at the old 48-bedroom Moorfield House Nursing Home in Moortown.

Prosecuting the case, Paul Canfield said police targeted the Fieldhouse Walk building on December 4 last year. Officers forced their way into the abandoned home and found 33 rooms set up for growing cannabis.

Six of the rooms had growing plants, with the remainder set up in preparation to grow and included lamps, transformers, fans, timers and carbon filters.

They found 811 plants capable of producing more than 44kgs of cannabis, with a street value of up to £446,000. The equipment used to grow the plants was worth up £45,000 alone, with the Crown describing it as an “industrial” operation. They found mattresses and a “well-stocked” fridge, along with weapons such as baseball bats and machetes.

They found the six defendants hidden in a cellar room. Working CCTV allowed the defendants to hide when they saw the police arrive, Mr Canfield suggested. The electricity was also found to be bypassed. They were all arrested and taken to the police station.

Erjon Gjorka, 21, Altior Deda, 30, Edison Markeci, 21, Ali Qerfozi, 42, Andi Teta, 33, and Agostin Marku, 36, were all sentenced at Leeds Crown Court today. All are of no-fixed address and have no previous convictions.

They each admitted a charge of producing cannabis, with Teta also admitting possession of cocaine after two small bags were found on him. All said they had ben recruited to perform simple tasks, tending to the crop.

In mitigation, Ben Campbell said of Qerfozi that he was a delivery driver Albania. An accepted basis of plea was that he had arrived illegally in the UK in September last year and lived in London. Wanting to return home, he was waiting for a passport to be processed when he answered a call for a gardener advertised on Facebook. He was then taken to Leeds, was the first defendant to arrive, and was instructed to water the plants.

For Teta, Mr Campbell said he had only been there a matter of days and was put to work to pay off the debt for being transported illegally to the UK.

Mitigating for Markeci, Salek Ahmed said he was the youngest of the group and had entered an early guilty plea. He said he had come to the UK illegally on the back of a lorry with “hope of a better life” and support his elderly parents back in Albania. He said there was no intention of becoming involved in criminality but he was put to work in the old nursing home. Mr Ahmed said: “He made a terrible mistake and he realises this.”

For Deda, Chloe Fairley said her client had been in the UK since 2016, had arrived illegally, but had since married an NHS nurse and lived in London. He had a National Insurance number and paid tax, but later struggled to find work. She said he was offered construction work in Leeds, but was duped and found it to be the cannabis farm.

She said: “He deeply regrets becoming involved in this and had previously been building a good life in this country. He knows this has jeopardised all that he had built up.”

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Mitigating for Gjorka, Imran Khan said that he was forced to work to pay off a debt to pay for his father’s heart surgery. He said: “He is a young man who had a heavy responsibility placed on his shoulders.” He said he received no money prior to his arrest, and his role was to water the plants and clean. He said he was only at the property for three days before the raid.

Finally, for Marku, Shannon Woodley said his basis of pleas was his “best mitigation”, that he was brought from Southampton to Leeds and was “misled” about the work which he thought would be in construction. He was in the UK illegally and also only arrived at the home three days prior to the bust, having received no financial reward. She added: “He is remorseful and regretful and extremely disappointed in the position he has found himself.”

The judge, Recorder Ian Mullarkey said: “It’s an abandoned property but of some size. Having forced their way in, police found an operation that was both sophisticated and extensive. It was a highly-professional set up.

“Each of you arrived illegally from Albania. You knew you were engaged in cannabis growing of a very substantial scale.”

He said that had the remaining rooms been utilised to grow cannabis, the value of the grow would have been “even more considerable”. He said that while it was significant, it did not reach “industrial-scale” levels, and that the each played lesser roles as gardeners.

Qerfozi, Deda and Teta were all jailed for 24 months. Gjorka received 18 months and Marku and Markeci both received 16 months. All were told they should expect to be deported once their sentence is served.

After sentencing, Sergeant Simon Green, of the Leeds North West Neighbourhood Policing Team, said: “This was a large-scale cannabis farm which was clearly being run as part of an organised criminal enterprise.

“Our operation has stopped nearly half a million pounds worth of the drug reaching the streets, where this illegal trade fuels associated crime and anti-social behaviour. We will be continuing to work closely with our partner agencies to target and disrupt this type of organised criminality to keep our communities safe.

 “We hope this successful outcome will provide some reassurance to the community, and we encourage anyone who suspects that any residential or commercial property is being used to grow cannabis to contact us so we can take action.”