Agostin Ndreaj, an Albanian man, was jailed for eight months for working at a large cannabis farm in Scarborough.
The police arrived at the house and found both doors were blocked to keep them out. Officers forced their way into the house anyway. Inside, they found a big cannabis operation.
They discovered nearly 400 plants growing inside, with eight rooms containing special equipment for growing cannabis. Someone had bypassed the electricity meter, and mature plants were hanging up inside.
An Albanian man named Agostin Ndreaj was in the house and told police he was in the UK illegally, having arrived a few months earlier from Albania.
Ndreaj said he worked construction in London before someone offered him a job in Scarborough. He was then sent to the house on Westborough Avenue, the one with all the cannabis.
He admitted that he cared for the plants, and that the people who brought him said cameras watched him inside. Ndreaj admitted he produced cannabis as a gardener. He said he went to the job willingly and nobody threatened him or kept him there, stating he needed to pay back the people who helped him enter the UK.
The judge called it an industrial-scale operation, adding that smarter people set it up. As he did not think Ndreaj was fully responsible and wanted to deter people and punish them, he sentenced Ndreaj to eight months in jail. Ndreaj will be deported to Albania because he has no right to stay in the UK.
Ndreaj’s lawyer said he came to the UK for money, initially thinking it was a construction job. He did not set up the grow or bypass the meter, and he had no previous convictions. Those are the facts of the case.