A Whitstable businessman who ran three industrial cannabis factories across Kent was jailed for ten years at Canterbury Crown Court on 17 August 2011.[1][2] John Read, 54, of Marine Parade, Whitstable, received nine years for conspiracy to produce cannabis worth an estimated £2 million, plus a consecutive year for attempting to pervert the course of justice, after a five-week trial.[1][2]

The network

Read was arrested after raids at Higher Shelvin Farm near Wootton in August 2009 and at industrial units on Coombe Valley Road, Dover, and the Joseph Wilson Industrial Estate, Whitstable, in April and May 2010.[1] Kent Police seized more than 4,400 plants across the three sites, which the BBC’s television bulletin said could together produce £2.5 million of drugs a year.[1][2] Detective Constable Dave Godden called it one of the largest and most professionally set-up factory finds in Kent in recent years.[1] A landlords’ press report had already described the case before sentencing as the county’s biggest ever cannabis factory, with plants worth about £3.3 million growing in three rented commercial properties.[3]

Others sentenced

Co-defendant Roger Coombs, 70, of Crawley, was found guilty of attempting to pervert the course of justice and received nine months suspended for two years with 100 hours of unpaid work.[1] Kent Police said two Vietnamese nationals arrested in the April 2010 Dover raid had also been jailed on drugs charges.[1]