A mother bought an isolated house in the remote countryside to help her family set up a huge cannabis factory.
Linda McCann, 60, carefully chose the property as a suitable place for the business she ran with husband Edward and son Daniel.
In addition to the class B drug, the family also produced cannabis oil and cannabis edibles, such as cannabis-infused chocolate, at an "industrial scale" at the house in Cwmbach, Carmarthenshire, west Wales.
They managed to run it undetected for five years, producing cannabis worth an estimated £3.5million.
But the family, who had moved to Wales from Hampshire, was snagged when police raided the building in October 2020 and, yesterday, McCann was sentenced to six years and seven months in prison.
Her husband and son will be sentenced in September, WalesOnline reports.
Sentencing McCann, Judge Geraint Walters said the house had been carefully chosen and then fitted out with equipment for an "industrial scale" cannabis production operation. He described McCann as an "enthusiastic participant" in an operation which he said was a "hugely profitable and successful business".
The judge said the public was rightly fed up with people operating cannabis farms in the communities and then selling the drug, and he said the courts had a duty to make it clear to those starting up such operations that the default sentence was almost always immediate custody.
The court heard the family recruited Jack Whittock and Justin Liles to help run the business. Both they, and the three McCanns, had pleaded guilty at an earlier hearing to conspiracy to produce cannabis and conspiracy to supply cannabis, and to acquiring criminal property - namely cash.
Whittock, 29 and from Narberth, Pembrokeshire, was jailed for two years and 10 months. Liles, 32 and from St Clears, Carmarthenshire, will spend 22 months behind bars.
Ian Wright, prosecuting, said officers carried out a search warrant and forced entry to a large outbuilding or bar next to a detached house on the plot and were met by an "overwhelming smell of cannabis" - inside they found an "extremely well-organised and sophisticated cannabis manufacturing operation".
The ground floor of the barn had been divided into six growing rooms equipped with lights and extractor fans, and a main working area with a commercial-size oven, and a pressure-device for extracting oil from plants. Some 202 plants of various stages of maturity from saplings in propagators to a large "mother" plant from which cuttings were taken were recovered. The upstairs of the barn was being used as a production area with a table and chairs, tools including secateurs, and clothes-horses on which harvested cannabis plants were being dried.
The barrister told the court that police also found a machine for sealing tin cans - tinned cannabis, he said, was an "emerging trend" in the UK as it kept the drug fresher and increased its longevity. The court heard the power supply to the barn had been bypassed, and an armoured trenched cable ran from the building directly to a nearby electricity pole.
The three family members in the dock were all arrested in the barn.
The court heard that in addition the plants the themselves - which had a potential value of up to £460,000 - officers also recovered around 80kg of "cannabis product" which was worth up to £1.5million. Meanwhile a search of the house next to the barn uncovered £10,000 cash divided into individual £1,000 bundles in the front bedroom, and a cannabis-infused chocolate bar on the kitchen table.
Mr Wright said the McCann family had spent some time meticulously searching for a suitable property from which to run the business, and that the Carmarthenshire small-holding suited their needs perfectly. The property was bought in July 2014 by Daniel McCann for £385,000. The prosecutor said over the five-year life of the conspiracy, the cannabis produced at the Carmarthenshire property may have had a street value of up to almost £3.5million.
While the McCanns ran the business, Whittock and Liles were involved in harvesting and preparing the crop, and were trusted by the family.
The court heard details of extensive text messaging between the conspirators in which they discussed the workings of the operation, the amounts of drugs being supplied and the money being earned, and the apparent high quality of the product. The court also heard about an expensive AMG Mercedes car which Linda McCann bought, and about the university tuition fees for the McCanns' daughter Samantha being paid for by "the barn".
McCann has no previous convictions. Her lawyer said the plan was partly conceived in an effort to alleviate some of the distressing side-effects of Edward McCann's chemotherapy treatment for leukaemia. He described his client as a "loyal and devoted wife and mother" for over 40 years.
The McCanns' daughter, Samantha, had stood trial with the other defendants in April but when the guilty pleas were entered by the five co-accused, the prosecution offered no evidence against her, and the jury was directed to return not guilty verdicts as far as she was concerned.
