Electricity-stealing gang brought down by pair of trainers

THEY DIVERTED POWER TO SUPPLY CANNABIS FARMS

- By LOUIS CORBETT

EIGHT criminals were jailed after Nottinghamshire Police became suspicious over a pair of trainers.

The group, who posed as workmen, used a legitimate electrical company as a guise to dig up roads and pretend to repair utilities.

But they were actually cutting into electricity mains and connecting warehouses and shops housing cannabis farms.

The company they operated under Elev8 Civils and Utilities Ltd - had the main group organisers as directors and the other six men as employees.

All ten men involved all communicated through a group on WhatsApp labelled "work" The Crown Prosecution Service said the gang illegally diverted electricity 54 times to cannabis farms across the country, some of which were run by organised crime gangs from Albania.

Two Nottinghamshire Police officers stopped the workmen after seeing them digging up the road on High Street, Mansfield Woodhouse.