Gang used drones to find drug farms so they could rob them

THEY DROVE TO NOTTS IN CONVOY FROM LONDON

- By MARTIN NAYLOR

A SIX-STRONG gang who used heat-seeking drones to find big cannabis crops and robbed one of them have been jailed for a combined total of more than 20 years.

A Nottingham Crown Court trial heard how after identifying one address in Nottinghamshire, the group drove up from London, threatened the Vietnamese grower with a knife and stole plants worth more than £200,000.

The group employed "scouts" to find where the illegal enterprises had been set up send footage back to them. They then "assembled a team" to raid them.

But a neighbour alerted police when one such home was being broken into in the early hours and a number of men were caught.

Sentencing the gang, Judge Penelope Stanistreet-Keen said: "It was planned and orchestrated by these defendants and others that were involved and the messages show the property had been under observation for three months.

"The group had travelled all the way up from London and one of them got in a window and held a knife to the throat of the man inside. The mature plants were taken by the group with the use of a duvet.