An illegal immigrant trafficked to Bradford by “mafia” to set up a £60,000 cannabis factory has been jailed for eight months.

Dat Van Tran travelled from Vietnam to West Yorkshire hidden in the back of lorries because he believed Bradford was “a land of gold,” his lawyer said.

Tran, 27, was on the run for more than four years and had begun a new life in Derbyshire with a wife and child when he was arrested in June this year, Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday.

He was convicted of being concerned in the production of cannabis in February 2008.

Prosecutor John Bull said he was linked by fingerprint evidence on a fusebox and DNA on a cigarette stub to a cannabis factory at a house in Horton Grange Road.

Police raided the four-bedroom terraced property after reports of a burglary and seized 429 cannabis plants from five rooms.

Tran told the jury he paid to be smuggled into the UK by handing over his late parents’ home in a poor area of Vietnam.

He flew to Russia and travelled overland to this country with other Vietnamese people, hidden in boxes in the back of trucks. He was picked up, taken to the house in Bradford and ordered to set up the cannabis factory.

Tran, speaking through an interpreter, said he did not know what the plants were.

When he asked his bosses, he was told: “You don’t need to know these things.”

He thought they were “medicinal plants” and when he found out the truth, he escaped from the house out of a window.

Judge Jonathan Durham Hall QC said Tran was trafficked to Bradford by “mafia”.

“You were fooled into coming to this country thinking it was wonderful,”the judge said. “You worked with a will to set up a very substantial cannabis factory. You were playing a not insignificant role in the installation and running of this operation.”

Judge Durham Hall added: “There are thousands of cannabis farms and factories. They are being detected at the rate of dozens every week. The police are very active in discovering them in this area.”