They operated in plain sight between November 2020 and February 2024, posing as legitimate workmen with liveried vans, barriers and signage. They even closed some roads…
‘Slipshod and dangerous’
Criminals used a registered utility company as cover to dig up the streets and supply electricity to cannabis farms on behalf of Albanian gangsters.
Bosses Ross McGinn, from Merseyside, and Andrew Roberts, from Greater Manchester, were among eight men sentenced at Liverpool Crown Court for a conspiracy involving at least 54 locations across England and Wales.
They operated in plain sight between November 2020 and February 2024, posing as legitimate workmen with liveried vans, barriers and signage. They even closed some roads.
McGinn was jailed for five years and four months while Roberts was sentenced to six years after admitting encouraging or assisting the production of cannabis, conspiracy to abstract electricity and conspiracy to steal.
‘Slipshod and dangerous’
Both 33-year-old McGinn, of Midway Road in Huyton, and 42-year-old Roberts, of Bell Lane in Wigan, had previously served prison time for drug dealing.
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The men were directors of a company called Elev8 Civils and Utilities Ltd, which roped in the other conspirators on a job-by-job basis.
They connected disused houses, pubs, shops, a nightclub and, in one case, a disused department store in north Wales, to the electricity grid.
The buildings were later filled with thousands of cannabis plants.
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Passing sentence, Judge David Potter said the men had shown “little or no regard to safety”.
The court heard the workmanship shown by the gang had been “slipshod” and dangerous in quality.
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Photographs recovered from their phones showed one of them, Andrew Roberts, with serious burns to his forehead that had been caused by an explosion.
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