Daniel Palmer, 40, of Hooper Close, Hatherleigh, was jailed for six years and three months for building an underground cannabis farm beneath a barn on his father’s land near Okehampton.[1] He had worked with a professional grower to bury five interlinked shipping containers fitted with high-tech hydroponic rooms, lights, water supplies and fans powered by their own generator.[1] Palmer ran a log-cabin business on the 200-acre Easter Hall Park estate at Petrockstowe, and hid the farm by building the barn over the containers with only a fertiliser-sack-covered floor hatch for access.[1]
Police raided the barn at 7pm on 10 February 2017 and found the containers holding lights, fans, growing beds, watering systems and two water butts of freshly cropped cannabis, with more than a kilogram of skunk recovered.[1] Palmer denied production, claiming a man calling himself Richard Jones had rented the land with false identity documents, but his DNA was found inside the growing area including on a light fitting.[1] A jury at Exeter Crown Court convicted him in August 2019, and Judge Paul Cook, sitting at Taunton, jailed him and set a timetable to seize his assets under the Proceeds of Crime Act.[1]
