Two Albanian men who acted as gardeners of a £4.5million Carlisle cannabis farm – thought to be one of the biggest ever found in Cumbria – have been jailed.
Police raided the former Pagoda nightclub at Lancaster Street, off Crown Street, at around 2.45pm on May 10 this year. The cannabis farm inside was the latest of many found across the country.
“We’ve seen a proliferation of this recently in this city,” prosecutor Brendan Burke told Carlisle Crown Court today. “Such premises are ideal because of solid buildings, high windows and soundproofing.”
Edward Pula, 28, and Florian Daci, 24, had been tending cannabis plants and living inside the Lancaster Street building, and fled through a small hatch.
The pair, along with a third man, tried to leap on to an adjacent roof four metres away but failed and instead fell eight metres to the ground.
Pula suffered injuries to his feet and was released from hospital into police control later that day.
Daci was detained for a spell with injuries to lower limbs. The third man remains immobile in hospital with complex multiple fractures to his legs and shoulder and currently faces no charge.
Inside the building, officers found a harvested 450kg crop of cannabis ready for distribution and potentially worth £4.5million.
There were also almost 800 juvenile plants indicative of the next phase, while stalks and branches from the main crop had been retained and could have produced cannabis resin worth almost £60,000, the court heard.
Run by an Albanian organised crime group, the illegal operation comprised a sophisticated set-up. “There was lighting, nutrients, filtration, extractors, driers and bypassing of the electrical system,” said Mr Burke.
Pula and Daci, of no fixed addresses, admitted cannabis production.
Both men had entered the country illegally by lorry on the promise of employment in the construction industry and in the hope of better lives, said their lawyers.
But instead they were put to work tending the cannabis farm having run up large debts as a result of being brought to the UK.
Pula and Daci were each given two-year jail terms by Recorder Paul Hodgkinson, who concluded that it had been an industrial operation for commercial supply.
“It was a large premises,” said Recorder Hodgkinson as he passed sentence, “capable of producing enormous amounts of cannabis.”
- Both defendants are expected to be deported when released from custody.
