An illegal immigrant caught working in a £6.5 million cannabis factory in a former shop on Kirkcaldy High Street has been jailed for three years and three months.
Petrit Gjuraj, 24, paid £20,000 to come from Albania to work in a large-scale drugs cultivation in the old WH Smith shop at 183-187 High Street.
Officers who searched the three-storey building, after trapping Gjuraj on the roof, found 1,330 cannabis plants, which were being grown on every floor.
Workers slept in a small area containing three double mattresses.
Detectives also found a large TV which showed live CCTV footage from a camera at the back of the premises.
Drugs squad officers said the cannabis could have netted the organised crime group £6,596,800.
£20k paid to come to UK
Albanian national Gjuraj, now of Paisley, pled guilty at the High Court in Edinburgh to being concerned in cultivating cannabis between March and May 2022.
On Thursday he appeared before Lord Scott for sentencing.
The judge said: “This was a sophisticated operation. You were involved for a period of two months.
“You deny playing a leading role but the extent of the operation must have been apparent to you – you were locked inside with the drugs.”
Prosecutor Alan Cameron KC told an earlier hearing Gjuraj informed police he had paid a person in Albania £20,000 to come to the UK.
“The arrangement was that should he not carry out the work then his family in Albania would have to sell their property to repay the debt.
“He made his own way to Belgium and then hid in a lorry and by hiding in the lorry was able to enter the UK.
“He worked in London before moving to Scotland where he worked for two months in the building where he was subsequently found by the police.”
The court heard the gang had spent about £70,000 to set up the Kirkcaldy premises – extensively damaged by fire in August 2022 – for “maximum cannabis cultivation”.
Detectives recovered 392 cannabis plants from the ground floor, 740 from the first floor and 146 from the top floor.
Mr Cameron said: “If the cannabis cultivated was sold in one eighth deals that would amount to approximately 164,920 deals at £40 per deal.
“This would have yielded approximately £6,596,800.”
He said the accused was “trusted by an organised crime group which had invested in the production of the cannabis and would have yielded significant sums from its onward sales”.
‘Terrified of gang’
Defence solicitor advocate Donna Maitland told the court her client slept on a mattress in a “locked factory”.
“He didn’t have any keys and was not able to leave.
“He was terrified of getting into trouble from the gang.
“There were regular threats to kill him and his family if he did not do what he was told.
“He tells me this has been his first involvement in the legal system.
“He was exploited and had no influence on those above him in the chain.”
She said his position was he was trafficked to the UK to work off a debt of almost £20,000, amassed through medical bills for his mother.
She said: “It is clear he is remorseful and is very anti-drugs.”
The prosecutor said previously Home Office checks showed he had no right to be in the UK and had not been trafficked.
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