AN Albanian national who tended a £48,000 cannabis farm in Bradford has been jailed for two years.

Prosecutor Andrew Horton told Bradford Crown Court that 31-year-old Agron Buzi was discovered in a house on Carr Bottom Avenue in Wibsey when it was raided by police at 8am on November 16 last year.

Officers found the curtains and blinds shut and no response from within. They then forced entry and found Buzi at the top of the stairs.

Inside the house, one room had been converted into an illegal cannabis farm containing 87 small plants.

Another room and the loft were being set up as grow rooms. Equipment and paraphernalia for growing the drug, including lighting and extractor fans, had been installed.

The electricity supply had also been tampered with.

Buzi was found to have plenty of tinned and fresh food, a mattress, quilt, and pillow, as well as two mobile phones and his passport. Cash totalling £722 was also discovered.

The estimated yield of the cannabis plants was just under 5kg in weight with an estimated street value of £47,900.

Buzi, of no fixed abode, was arrested at the scene. He said he had been in the house for 10 days. He said the plants were not his and that he was there to flick switches on and off.

Mitigating, Lydia Carroll told the court that Buzi, an illegal entrant to the UK, had been homeless and living on the streets before running the cannabis grow 10 days before he was caught.

Bradford Telegraph and Argus: The case was heard at Bradford Crown Court The case was heard at Bradford Crown Court (Image: Newsquest)

She said his vulnerabilities had been exploited by others, that there was no evidence that he knew where the drugs were going, and that he had received no financial reward other than having a roof over his head. She said the cash found on the premises was for him to live on.

She said Buzi was liable for deportation but that he was happy for a voluntary return to Albania to reconnect with his unwell mother.

Sentencing Buzi, who appeared via video link from HMP Leeds and spoke via an interpreter, Mr Recorder Simon Kealey KC said the cannabis farm was “undoubtedly an ongoing operation” and that Buzi had “some awareness and understanding” of the scale of it.

He added: “You were clearly trusted to come and go as you chose.

“There is, in my judgment, expectation of significant financial advantage.”

He ordered the forfeiture and destruction if the cannabis and the equipment used to grow it, and the forfeiture of the cash under the Misuse of Drugs Act.