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A frustrated Nottingham judge believes an illegal immigrant will return to the UK to grow and sell cannabis again after he was caught with 3kg of it in the boot of a car on the M1. Judge Stuart Rafferty KC told Nottingham Crown Court that the defendant – Endrit Sopaj – “will come back again” as he put him behind bars for 18 months.
The 30-year-old previously returned to the UK “in the back of a lorry” having previously been deported after serving jail time for growing the class B drug. And when he was stopped with the illegal package, he was deleting videos of a “huge” warehouse full of plants he had filmed on his mobile phone.
Judge Rafferty said: “While the mitigation will be to ‘keep the sentence as short as possible’ we all know (you) will come back and do it again because it is a self-fulfilling prophecy. You will come back because you owe the people whose cannabis was lost money. It was 3kg and they will clearly blame you. We all know how it works.
“I feel that frustration as it demonstrates the difficulty the courts have to expect the court to wave some magic wand and get drug dealing back under control while someone is living in Spain or elsewhere with thousands of pounds falling into their hands on a daily basis.”
The judge added: “The question the court always asks when sentencing a defendant like you is why did you bother coming to this country at all when all you are going to do is commit crime?
“Why take the journey when you can’t (legally) live here or work here? Why did you not learn your lesson the first time you were deported? The simple answer is because crime pays.”
Alice Ibbotson, prosecuting said police acting on intelligence stopped a car the defendant was driving on the M1 southbound between junction 28, at South Normanton and junction 27, near Hucknall, on November 27, last year. She said it was searched and in the boot was a 3kg vacuum-sealed package of cannabis.
Endrit Sopaj, 30, was caught with a 3kg package of cannabis on the M1
(Image: Nottinghamshire Police)
The prosecutor said while officers sat in the back of the car the defendant was trying to delete photographs on his mobile phone which were later recovered and found to be of a huge warehouse containing what appeared to be hundreds, if not more than a thousand, plants growing.
She said the value of what was found in the package would have been £10,000 to £15,000 if sold wholesale and up to £30,000 at street level.
The judge said: “Because of the ineptitude in which this case has been investigated the court cannot reach a proper conclusion as to where you are in this enterprise. Your role could well be highly significant or it could be lower but what is clear from the evidence is that you were expecting to make money. £300 a trip, not a bad day’s work.”
Sopaj, of no fixed address, pleaded guilty to possession with intention to supply cannabis and to driving without a valid licence or valid insurance. He has a previous jail term for prosecution of cannabis which previously saw him deported back to Albania.
Gareth Gimso, mitigating, said his client “came back into the country in the back of a lorry” found himself working “in car washes and the like” and was then recruited “back into the cannabis world”.
“}]] A frustrated judge believes illegal immigrant Endrit Sopaj ‘will be back again’ Read More
