Secret £3.5m cannabis farm that stood out like a 'beacon' in sleepy village

When Edward McCann moved from Portsmouth to a farm in rural west Wales, he started growing cannabis, claiming it was only a small amount to help with his leukaemia.

But locals in the sleepy hamlet of Cwmbach, Carmarthenshire, knew something wasn't right - they started wondering why someone would put security fences and CCTV cameras up on a farm with no livestock?

It was because McCann and his family had established one of the most sophisticated cannabis operations Wales had ever seen - that brought in about £3.5m over five years.

McCann, 66, his wife Linda, 63, and son Daniel, 41, are serving prison terms after admitting their parts and, at a Swansea Crown Court hearing, they were ordered to pay back £1m under the proceeds of crime act or face more time in jail.

While it may have been common for neighbouring farmers to take on seasonal employees to work in the fields, the McCanns had hired two men to help cultivate their own bumper harvest.

When police raided the farm during lockdown in October 2020, officers found Linda McCann and the hired hands tending the crop of herbal cannabis, and using ovens to produce cannabis resin and cannabis-infused chocolate bars.

"This was as sophisticated a factory as the court has seen in Wales, with Daniel McCann bragging in messages that the market in Wales was saturated and that you would have to venture into England to secure new markets," Judge Geraint Walters said.

The family had hoped to go under the radar, after they had moved from the city of Portsmouth on England's south coast to a small farm in a sleepy Welsh village.

Initially, former soldier Edward McCann had argued the cannabis in the barn was primarily for his medical use, after he was diagnosed with leukaemia - a type of blood cancer - in 2010.

In any case, he said, the £8,500 they had paid for electricity over five years was insufficient to produce as many plants as was alleged.

But the court heard how the family had extracted electricity from the National Grid to power the lights and electric fans they had installed in their cannabis factory.

The judge suggested simply operating in the agricultural heartland just outside Whitland with no livestock and heavy security had drawn attention to them, meaning it was perhaps only a matter of time before they were caught.

He said local farmers would have been wondering what was going on at Blaenllain Farm, adding: "You were shining a beacon on the oddity of it all."

Edward McCann was arrested in the nearby farmhouse while Daniel McCann, who owned the property but was living at the time in Hampshire, was eventually arrested in Portsmouth in February 2021.

During the search of the barn, police found six purpose-built rooms downstairs which contained cannabis plants at various stages of growth.

Upstairs there was a number of clothes horses which were being used to dry out cannabis and several plastic bags and boxes containing large quantities of herbal cannabis.

The plants in the barn had a potential value of up to £460,000, while officers also recovered around 80kg (176lb) of cannabis products worth up to £1.5million.

In 2022, Edward McCann was sentenced to seven years and seven months in prison and Daniel McCann to eight and a half years, after pleading guilty to producing cannabis part-way through a trial.

Linda McCann also admitted the charge and was given six years and seven months, while the two hired men were also jailed for their part.

Justin Liles of St Clears, Carmarthenshire, was given 22 months and Jack Whittock, from Narberth, Pembrokeshire, two years and 10 months.

The Swansea hearing was told that Edward McCann profited by almost £1.8m.

He was ordered by the court to pay back £340,000 within three months or face a further four years in jail.

Daniel McCann must also pay back the same amount and also faces four more years in jail if he fails to do so.

Linda McCann has to pay back £335,000 or face three further years in jail.

She is said to have made £1.45m in profit.

Judge Walters said: "Failure to pay the sums will attract the prison sentences I have imposed and even if the sentences were served the obligation to pay would remain."

The hearing continues on Friday to determine how much Liles and Whittock must pay back.