FOUR members of a drugs gang are starting long prison sentences before being deported after they were caught running a million-pound cannabis factory in North Yorkshire.

Police found more than 2,300 plants at all stages of maturity in six purpose-built rooms, a drying room, supply depot and everything needed to produce huge fortnightly crops for sale in a farm warehouse on August 8, heard York Crown Court.

They also found “mother” plants to provide more plants as the existing plants in the Riccall factory were harvested.

Experts using conservative estimates calculated the plants already growing could produce street sales of £850,000.

“In fact that is the tip of the iceberg because this operation had been going for a year,” said Judge Andrew Stubbs QC.

“This was a million pound business on any view.

“The police found a sophisticated and successful cannabis growing operation.”

Richard Canning, prosecuting, said: “This was an industrial scale cannabis factory.”

Four illegal immigrants from Albania were living in the warehouse, which had been rented by another man under a Greek name from last September. They were: Gentian Kanushi, 30, Arben Qemallaj, 42, Xhelal Kabasha, 30, and Euxhenio Mucobega, 21.

All four pleaded guilty to cannabis production. Kanushi, who had been convicted of large-scale cannabis production in Kent in 2013, and Qemallaj were jailed for 40 months at York Crown Court. Kabasha and Mucobega were jailed for three years.

All four are expected to be deported at the end of their sentences.

Neal Kutte, mitigating for all four, said they had all come into the country illegally, and had never been in the UK before, except for Kanushi, who had previously been deported after his sentence for the Kent cannabis factory.

Each had been offered a job which they had thought was legitimate work and had not realised it wasn’t until they arrived at the warehouse.

But each accepted that they had stayed, once they knew their job was illegal. None had been at the warehouse for more than a month, some for only a matter of days.

The judge said their role in tending the plants was essential because without it the factory couldn’t produce cannabis.

Mr Canning said the farmer who owned the warehouse in Landing Lane had seen beds and other living accommodation items going into it in September 2016, men in high visibility vests and vans coming and going.