A weed grow was discovered in rural Wiltshire in the U.K. growing in an abandoned nuclear bunker was said to be bringing in more than $2 million U.S. dollars.
Per The Sun
The underground site is almost completely impenetrable with cops having to wait outside during a midnight raid before they were able to cuff the criminal ringleaders.
The former Ministry of Defence structure was built in the 1980s but was later abandoned and used by organised crime bosses Martin Fillery, 45, Plamen Nguyen, 27, and Ross Winter, 30.
The trio had been illegally filtering off electricity worth £250,000 from local power cables in order to run equipment worth £140,000.
Inside the factory were 4,000 cannabis plants growing beneath sophisticated lighting that would have produced a crop worth £2million per year on the black market.
Cops who launched the midnight drugs bust had to wait for Nguyen and Winter, both of Bristol, and Fillery, of Bridgwater, Somerset, to leave the building before they were able to seize the keys to it.
The scale of the drugs factory was so huge it took 10 days to clear the site at RGHQ Chilmark, Wilts, close to an idyllic village, after a raid in February.
The set up was so sophisticated that a crop could be produced every six weeks and sold across the south west.
Living quarters were provided for the ‘gardeners’ who tended to the crops and there were even nurseries to help rear younger plants.
The men all admitted conspiracy to produce class B drugs and abstracting electricity when they appeared at Salisbury Crown Court.
Fillery also admitted possession of criminal property and will be subject to the Proceeds of Crime Act (POCA) after sentencing.
Detective Inspector Simon Pope said: “This was an enormous discovery for our Local Priority Team – I believe it was the biggest cannabis factory we’ve ever had in Wiltshire and the South West region.
“The isolated and secure nature of the location made the warrant particularly challenging.
The bunker had 20 rooms including nurseries and places for growers to live. All this makes me wish that another season of Top Boy was coming. Sully would’ve been all over this.