Duo jailed after £1m cannabis farm found in former Duncan Bannatyne HQ in Darlington
Two men have been jailed in connection with a £1m cannabis farm uncovered in a disused office building.
Police discovered 2,085 cannabis plants in Power House, Darlington, which is the former headquarters of Duncan Bannatyne.
Teesside Crown Court heard nearly £50,000 had been spent to equip the 14 rooms and the electricity supply had been by-passed.
One room was also a living room for two Vietnamese gardeners who had been people-trafficked into the UK.
Police raided the three-storey building in Haughton Road on 29 March.
Ian West, prosecuting, said the street value of the cannabis was more than £1million.
The court heard Minh Nguyen, 35, of Haughton Road, one of the gardeners, was caught escaping through a window and told officers he did not know it was cannabis.
He said that he was smuggled into the UK in a van from France a few months before and he had arranged to pay people traffickers £28,000.
He spent a few days in a Chinese restaurant before he was transferred to the farm in Darlington.
Mr West said: “He was told that he could not leave the address and would be harmed if he did. He said that the plant had already been set up the electricity bypassed and a man was already there.
“He was given instructions as to how to look after the plants and told that they were worth a lot of money and to be careful.
“He was also shown how to crop the plants and two men came regularly to the property and collected the plants and supplied him with food. He said that he had not been paid but he was expecting £1,000 a month.”
The second gardener Thanh Vo, 33, of no fixed abode, said that he knew nothing about the cannabis plants. He said that he had been arrested in Middlesbrough days before as an illegal migrant and he was put into an hotel in Newcastle.
The court heard he went to buy medicine and was virtually kidnapped by two men who had met him when he arrived in the UK. He was threatened with knives and beaten up before being taken to the Darlington premises, the court heard.
Bryan Russell, defending said in mitigation that he disputed the value put on the cannabis by the Crown.
The men had spent 111 days in custody here on remand and they wanted to return home to Vietnam
The judge Recorder Martin Rose said that the cannabis farm was clearly a long-term investment.
He added: “In short it was a factory and one designed to produce cannabis on industrial lines.”
The pair were jailed for 27 months and told that they would be deported after serving half of the sentence after they pleaded guilty to production of a Class B drug cannabis.
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