A man has been caught working in Welsh cannabis farms twice in less than three years, a court has heard. Albanian national Armando Beti was let out of prison early after agreeing to be sent back to Albania following his first conviction, but was caught being smuggled back into the UK before disappearing and then turning up in another drugs operation.
A judge at Swansea Crown Court noted that on both occasions Beti had claimed to be naïve and exploited by gangs, a story the judge said he would treat with “a pinch of salt”. The 37-year-old defendant has been sent back to prison.
Alexandra Wilson, prosecuting, said on the morning of October 3 this year officers executed a search warrant at an address on Dimon Street in Pembroke Dock. She said the officers who forced entry to the premises found an insulation wall which they had to break through and then a locked door they had a breach before reaching the bottom of the stairwell.
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She said the officers went up to the first floor of the premises and found “a large cannabis set up” spread over three rooms with extractor fans, ducting, lights and dehumidifiers. Police recovered a total of 594 cannabis plants in various stages of maturity from nursery plants up to plants on the verge of harvest. Officers found the electricity meter to the building had been bypassed.
The court heard that as part of the operation police had deployed a drone and that while police were gaining entry to the premises a male was seen fleeing through a fire escape and onto the rooftops. Beti was tracked and located in the attic of a nearby property where he was arrested. The prosecutor said police estimated the potential yield of the Dimon Street operation could have been worth up to £196,000.
In his interview Beti told officers the drug farm was already in place when he arrived at the property some 10 days before his arrest and said his role was to act as a “gardener” and to water the plants. He said he was in debt to the tune of £6,000 to people he had met at an immigration detention centre who had acted as interpreters for him and had provided him with a fake address. He said he was told he could pay off the debt by working for a month in the cannabis operation. For the latest court reports, sign up to our crime newsletter here
Armando Beti, of no fixed abode, had previously pleaded guilty to being concerned in the production of cannabis when he appeared in the dock for sentencing. He has a previous conviction for the same offence from May 2022 at Cardiff Crown Court for which he was sentenced to 14 months in prison – this offence had involved a huge cannabis farm of more than 2,000 plants found in an old sports and social club in Roath.
The court heard Beti was released early from that sentence when he agreed to be sent back to Albania and in August 2022 he was deported. However in August 2023 he was found hiding under a blanket in a lorry entering the UK by ferry and in October 2023 was sentenced to 16 months in prison at Canterbury Crown Court for entering the country in breach of a deportation order.
He was subsequently released on licence from that sentence then disappeared before turning up in west Wales. Caitlin Brazel, for Beti, said the defendant had made admissions to the police and entered an unequivocal guilty plea at the earliest opportunity.
She said the defendant was under no illusions about the seriousness of the offence before the court and the sentence he was facing, and said Beti wanted to go home to Albania and be reunited with his wife. Judge Geraint Walters said by chance he had been the judge who sentenced Beti in Cardiff in 2022.
He said he had now learned that the defendant had been released early from that sentence after agreeing to return to Albania at the expense of taxpayers under the Home Office’s Facilitated Return Scheme “saying he had learned his lesson and the offending was never to be repeated” – and yet “here he is again”. The judge said it seemed Beti had returned to the UK “as soon as he could get around it” and again involved himself in a cannabis operation, and he said he wondered whether the defendant was indeed just a lowly “gardener” as he claimed.
Judge Walters noted that Beti had now twice claimed to be naïve and exploited by others and saying he just wants to go home to his wife, and said he would treat those assertions “with a pinch of salt”. The judge said the Albanian criminal gangs who run the cannabis operations and provide the “standard lines” for workers to say if they are caught need to realise the judges are not naïve and that they understand what is going on.
He said Beti was a repeat offender who was “wedded to the criminal activity of the gangs” and said he was entitled to impose a sentence outside the usual sentencing guidelines. With a one-third discount for his guilty plea Beti was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison. The judge said how much of that sentence the defendant would serve in custody and what would subsequently happen to him was a matter for the Home Office.
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