Pensioner who guarded UK’s biggest ever cannabis farm walks free

A pensioner has been spared jail for guarding the UK’s biggest ever cannabis factory after his fellow pot farmers were locked up for a total of 90 years.

Alan Marquiss, 69, watched over more than 4,000 marijuana plants with a street value of up to £5.51million in Sittingbourne, Kent, between 21 October and 14 December 2015.

He was one of 15 gang members who helped to cultivate potent skunk worth £26 million in two-storey wooden sheds in seven sites across Kent and Norfolk.

The farms guzzled more than £30,000 worth of free electricity a month while active because the gang tampered with the supply to avoid paying.

Fourteen members of the pot farming gang were jailed for a total of 90 years at the Old Bailey in July for being concerned in the cultivation of cannabis and being concerned in the abstraction of electricity.

Ringleader Michael Edward Corcoran, 50, from Yalding, Kent, was jailed for 14 years.

Marquiss couldn’t be sentenced with them because he had a stroke and suffered from heart problems and deep vein thrombosis after he was arrested in December 2015.

He was given a two-year sentence suspended for two years after judge Anuja Dhir, QC, heard about his ‘life-changing medical difficulties’.

‘You pleaded guilty to being involved in what came to be known as “The Sittingbourne Conspiracy”,’ she said.

‘The Sittingbourne Conspiracy took place between 1 February 2015 and 15 December 2015.

‘Within the site the police found 4,085 cannabis plants that would have given a yield of £2.4million and a street value of between £1.15million and £5.51million.

‘It was a considerable enterprise, sophisticated in nature, which is a hallmark of these cases, and but for the efforts of the police would have resulted in very substantial profits.’

The judge said Marquiss had a ‘lesser role’ in the gang, adding: “There has been a considerable delay in sentencing you and the delay has been because of your ongoing medical issues.

‘You have been keen to be sentenced earlier but the delay was because I wasn’t prepared to sentence you without knowing more about your medical condition,’ she added.

‘In this exceptional case I’m going to suspend that sentence for two years.

‘There will be no conditions attached to that suspended sentence.’

Marquiss, of Disraeli Close, Thamesmead, southeast London, admitted one count of conspiracy to produce cannabis and one of conspiracy to abstract electricity between 1 October 2014 and 15 December 2015.

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