TWO murderers who ran a nationwide network of cannabis farms have been jailed for a total of eleven and a half years.

Boa Lung Huang and Zhouli Zhang masterminded their underworld operation from a warehouse on Elvington Industrial Estate which they converted into a cannabis factory capable of turning out crops worth £200,000 to £400,000, Leeds Crown Court heard.

They harvested one crop before police raided the factory. Huang, 44, also ran a smaller farm in a house on Eagle Road, Bristol, and Zhang masterminded one in Troon Road, Doncaster.

Calling them “sophisticated, organised criminals,” Judge John Potter told the pair: “The quantity of cannabis produced within this conspiracy, once it was sold on the streets of the UK, which was to be the plan here, would result in significant harm to our community.”

He jailed Huang, no fixed address, for seven years, and Zhang, of Scarth Avenue, Doncaster, for four and a half. Huang denied a charge of conspiracy to produce cannabis, but was convicted by a jury on Thursday. Zhang pleaded guilty to the same charge.

The sentences will be served alongside the life sentences each has already received for murdering their co-conspirator Cai Guan Chen in the Elvington factory in a drug feud.

Mr Chen was battered to death at the Elvington site, and his body was tied up with rope and dumped in the Selby canal at Burn.

The judge heard Huang arranged the renting and staffing of the Elvington factory and Zhang, a builder and electrician, used his expertise to construct its hidden growing rooms, with specialist heating and lighting systems. He had also built the Doncaster farm. Both invested “significant” sums in the cannabis operations.

Paul Williams, for Huang, said he was a “regional manager” for others higher up in the organisation and the Bristol farm was an “ad hoc” enterprise, started when Huang was on the run following the murder and discovery of the Elvington factory. Huang, who was an illegal immigrant, had worked cash in hand in the food industry before going into drugs for financial reasons.

David Dixon for Zhang said Huang was the “guiding light” of the operation. Zhang initially thought he was working for a supermarket business, not a cannabis farm. He had arrived legally in the UK and had worked legitimately.