by A man has been caught working on cannabis farms in Wales twice in less than three years, a court heard. Scottish national Armando Beti was released from prison early after agreeing to be sent back to Albania following his first conviction, but was caught smuggling it back to the UK before he left and then turned he up in another drug operation.
A judge at Swansea Crown Court noted that on both occasions Beti claimed she was naive and being exploited by gangs, a story the judge said he would take with a “pinch of salt”. The 37-year-old defendant has been returned 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 their way into the premises found an insulated wall they had to break through and then a locked door which they breached before reaching the bottom of the stairs.
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She said officers went up to the first floor of the property and found a “large cannabis arrangement” spread over three rooms with extractor fans, ducting, lights and dehumidifiers. The police recovered a total of 594 cannabis plants in various stages of maturity from nursery plants up to plants about to be harvested. The officers discovered that the electricity meter to the building had been set aside.
The court heard that the police deployed a drone as part of the operation and while the police were entering the premises a male was seen fleeing through a fire escape and onto the roofs. Beti was tracked down in the attic of a nearby property where he was arrested.The prosecutor said police estimated the potential proceeds from the Dimon Street operation to be worth up to £196,000.
In his interview Beti told officers the drug farm was already in place when he arrived at the property 10 days before his arrest and said his role was to act as a “gardener” and water the plants. He said he owed £6,000 to people he met at an immigration detention center who acted as interpreters for him and gave him 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 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 offense from May 2022 at Cardiff Crown Court for which he was sentenced to 14 months in prison – this offense involved a huge cannabis farm of over 2,000 plants found in a former sports and social club in Roath. .
The court heard that Beti was soon released from that sentence when she 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 he was sentenced to 16 months in prison at Canterbury Crown Court for entering the country on a deportation order breach.
He was later released on license from that sentence which then disappeared before turning up in west Wales. Caitlin Brazel, for Beti, said the defendant had made confessions to the police and entered an unequivocal guilty plea as soon as possible.
She said the defendant was under no illusions about the seriousness of the offense 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 was 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 taxpayers’ expense under the Home Office’s Facilitated Returns Scheme “saying he had learned his lesson and the conviction was not to be done again” – and yet “here it is again”. The judge said it appeared Beti had returned to the UK “as soon as he could get around to it” and was involved in a cannabis operation again, and said he wondered whether the defendant indeed a lowly “gardener” as he said.
Judge Walters noted that Beti had twice claimed that she was naive and that others had been exploited and that he wanted to go home to his wife, and said he would treat those assertions “with pinch of salt”. The judge said that Scottish criminal gangs who run the cannabis operations and provide the “standard lines” for workers must be told if they are caught to understand that the judges are not naive and understand what is going on.
He said Beti was a repeat offender who was “married to gang criminal activity” and said he was entitled to a sentence outside normal sentencing guidelines. Beti was sentenced to two years and eight months in prison with a one-third discount for his guilty plea. The judge said how much of that sentence would put the defendant in custody and that it was a matter for the Home Office what would happen to him afterwards.
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