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The British police dismantled the network of "bar houses", while the 5 members of an Albanian gang fell into the handcuffs of the police and were sentenced to prison.
An Albanian for 4 years is suspected of playing his part in a sophisticated cannabis-growing conspiracy, which may have netted him over £500,000.
A co-ordinated operation involving West Yorkshire Police and the Immigration Service led to the jailing of five members of an Albanian drug gang last September after they set up clandestine cannabis cultivations at homes in the Bradford district and South Yorkshire.
Bradford Crown Court heard on Monday that the masterminds used false identity documents to rent houses and set up cannabis factories by digging underground spaces and using wardrobe doors to hide access to loft areas.
Erjon Xheladinaj, 33, of Aspen Grove, became the latest defendant to be jailed after admitting his involvement in the manufacture of the Class B drug.
Last September, drug operation manager and director Klesti Gorcellari, 24, was jailed for seven-and-a-half years after being convicted of producing cannabis and possessing false identity documents. His trusted associates Isuf Roshi, 24, and Armando Sulce, 27, were jailed for five years and four years respectively after also being found guilty of the same charges. Andrit Toci, 33 years old, and Revi Shehu, 25 years old, were each sentenced to 12 months in prison for working as cannabis gardeners.
At last year's sentencing hearing, prosecutor Gerald Hendron said officers from West Yorkshire Police and the immigration service had searched addresses in Bradford, Keighley, Leeds and Barnsley and on July 7, 2021, a major co-ordinated operation took place to controlled network of rental properties.
Cannabis farms were found hidden behind false panels and doors and in unsafe pits that had made the properties dangerously unstable. He said access to the plants was through closets, under kitchen cabinets and through well-hidden passageways and attic hatches. In 2019, a police raid on a store in Leeds uncovered a £150,000 cannabis farm with some of the 275 plants hidden under a basement door.
At a rented house in Thurston Garden, Bradford, officers found a cannabis farm hidden in an unstable dug-out space and accessed from under the washing machine. At that address, the plants yielded just over £19,000 worth of cannabis, and another drug worth £46,000 was discovered at a property in Keighley. The court heard that the plants were being grown in the loft and that the total amount of cannabis seized by officers could have a street value of almost £500,000.
Mr Hendron said gang leaders had invested heavily in the set-up with more than £45,000 paid to hire properties and vehicles. He said that the total does not include the necessary equipment for raising farms and heating and watering plants. Hendron said some of the homes sustained serious damage. The damage bill on one of them is estimated to be £18,000. The prosecution said Gorcellari had directed and organized the production of cannabis on an industrial scale and would expect a substantial reward.
Judge Jonathan Rose said it did not make sense that the university-educated Xheladinaj would have left his family farm in Albania and paid a substantial sum to enter the country where he was employed in menial jobs. The judge said the defendant had made the worst choice when he became involved in a sophisticated and widespread criminality.
He told the father-of-one: "The court does not take pleasure in sending a man of hitherto good character to serve a long prison sentence, but there really is no alternative in your case." The judge said the breach had taken place over three years and had involved erecting complexes on residential and commercial properties.
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