A FAILED asylum-seeker has been jailed for two years and three months after the police busted a £350,000 cannabis farm in Bradford.

Dung Hoang was working as a gardener at the sophisticated grow in the disused office building which had 667 cannabis plants in it, Bradford Crown Court heard yesterday.

The building on Bradford Lane had iron bars on the front door and windows and eight large rooms over three floors had been converted into a cannabis factory.

When the police raided the premises on January 21 they arrested Hoang, 41, of no fixed address, who was tending to the plants.

Prosecutor Joe Allman said the building contained 470 small plants in a “nursery room” with the remaining mature plants being grown in separate areas.

The electricity supply had been bypassed and Hoang and another man had been well supplied with food in the fridge and freezer.

“There was a slow cooker with food cooking in it and there was a large amount of alcohol,” he told the court.

“Hoang had £300 secreted in a sock and an iPhone 12 down his trousers,” Mr Allman added.

There was high-powered lighting in the growing rooms, along with hydroponics and a ventilation system.

Mr Allman said the estimated yield from the crop would have been over 20 kilograms of cannabis with a street value of £354,857.

In mitigation, it was stated that Hoang, a Vietnamese national, came to the United Kingdom in 2014, arriving via France in the back of a lorry.

After his application for asylum was refused, he lived a hand to mouth existence before he was offered the job as a gardener at the cannabis grow.

Hoang, who faces deportation after he has served his sentence, pleaded guilty to production of cannabis.

Judge Andrew Hatton said he was obviously being rewarded and paid for what he was doing at the premises.

“You had £300 in your sock as well as an iPhone 12, a very expensive piece of kit,” he said.

He continued: “It was sophisticated cannabis set up and you were playing a part in it.”

Judge Hatton said the bypassing of the electricity and the fact that it was “an on-going operation” were aggravating features of the case.