A father-of-three who helped set up an 80-plant cannabis factory at a farm has been jailed.
Bernard McMahon, 57, used his ‘expertise’ to rent a bungalow at East Side Spire Farm on Sandy Lane in Accrington for another man and source production and hydroponics equipment for the facility, a court heard.
When police raided the farm in June 2013 they could smell cannabis coming from a bungalow window and found black film covering a set of ‘moist’ French doors.
Inside they discovered a zipped up black tent housing the cannabis farm along with high powered lighting units and ventilation systems.
Officers found a total of 78 growing plants and two ‘mother plants’ which could produce a total cannabis yield of 3.12kg.
McMahon, who was living at a separate flat on the farm, pleaded guilty at Burnley Crown Court to being concerned in the production of cannabis and was jailed for 23 months.
Kate Hammond, prosecuting, told the court the farm owner had set up a tenancy agreement with McMahon for the bungalow and ‘she didn’t even have a key to the premises’.
The court heard how police searched McMahon’s flat on the farm and found ‘cannabis related paraphernalia’, keys for the bungalow, documents showing knowledge of growing cannabis, a price list for purchased items and piping matching the irrigation system.
When interviewed by police, McMahon denied having access to the bungalow and claimed another man had started renting it six weeks earlier and ‘lads were coming back and forth’.
Miss Hammond told the court: “Money was clearly expended and he (McMahon) certainly had quite a role obtaining the premises, getting the lease signed and setting up the whole set up.”
Jonathan Turner, defending, said McMahon didn’t have a ‘significant role’ and there was ‘no evidence he was involved in the operating or management function’.
He said: “His role was to fit the hydroponic system, describe how it was to work and leave. He didn’t see the plants going into that building, but he was aware someone was attending on a daily basis.”
Mr Turner said McMahon had been living in a ‘small holding’ outside Toulouse in France and returned to the UK after his daughter and son’s partner had both had children.
Judge Simon Newell said it was a ‘sophisticated and professional operation’ and Bernard McMahon played an ‘essential function’.
Sentencing, he said: “It seems to be a very well organised and engineered structure and processing plant for the growing of cannabis.
“Because you are a person who doesn’t believe that cannabis is a restricted drug, you use such knowledge as you have, and it seems to me to be professional, sophisticated and experiences information, to assist another man who had rented the bungalow.
"You helped him set up this system and told him where to get the equipment and put it in place.
“The organisation of which you had been a part, although I accept not the prime mover, was clearly an organisation that was into the wholesale production of cannabis on a commercial way.
“There is no possibly way 3.12kg could be considered personal use or even for use among a very small circle of people.
“Without your expertise this cannabis farm could not have been set up in the sophisticated and professional way it was if it hadn’t been for you.
"It is not a limited function therefore, it was an essential function.”
