A man who was paid to travel from Italy to the Bradford district to tend a large cannabis farm has been jailed for two years.

Istvan-Szilard Kabai was caught at the property after windows were smashed by burglars wanting to steal the crop of 128 plants, Bradford Crown Court heard today.

Kabai, 30, a Romanian national, had been promised 25 per cent of the value of the cannabis he was looking after at a house in Devonshire Street, Keighley.

He was arrested at the scene on December 16 when police busted the factory following an alert that it was being burgled.

Prosecutor Paul Canfield said two windows had been broken at the house and attempts made to crowbar the barricaded rear door.

When the police forced entry they found that two bedrooms and the attic were being used to grow the cannabis. There were heaters, timers and fans and the electricity meter had been bypassed.

There were 85 plants in the bedrooms and a further 43 smaller plants in the attic.

Kabai and another man were living at the address, sleeping on camp beds in the living room.

Kabai told the police he was offered the chance to earn a large amount of money in the United Kingdom.

His flight into the country was paid for and he was collected at the airport and brought to the house.

Kabai had no previous convictions for any offences in this country or elsewhere, Mr Canfield said.

His barrister, Peter Hampton, said the factory had already been set up and the meter bypassed when he arrived.

Kabai had been immediately honest with the police and not sought to run the “fashionable” defence that he had been trafficked.

“He was a very small cog in a large criminal enterprise operating in Bradford and further afield in the UK,” Mr Hampton said.

Those in charge of the operation took advantage of people’s foolishness or exploited them, or both.

“He made the foolish decision to obtain what he thought was easy money while in dire financial circumstances in Italy,” Mr Hampton told the court. “The criminal enterprise will chew him up and spit him out the other side.”

Judge Andrew Hatton said Kabai went into the criminality for financial gain, expecting 25 per cent of the value of the crop.

“I rather suspect you would have been disappointed when it came to the time for payment,” he said.

Kabai will be automatically deported when he has served his sentence.