You would be forgiven for thinking you were watching Crimestoppers. Alongside video taken from CCTV and doorbell cameras is a message appealing for help to identify the thieves: “Who knows these lads will get £10k. Message for any details. This is in London NW.”
In fact this is an appeal from an Albanian gang in London, who are looking for five hooded men who broke into a house where they had developed a large-scale cannabis farm.
The gang has launched a TikTok account dedicated to finding the people who target their stashes of drugs.
The parallels with Crimestoppers end when you start reading the comments, which are surprisingly supportive of the attempts to track down the thieves and call for revenge in graphic terms.
“Revenge will take place for them when they go back to Albania,” says one user. Another writes: “If you find them, cut off their hands and feet.”
Advertisement
A third speculates it was an inside job. “Your relatives, knowing what was inside the house, have sold the information to these people,” they suggest.
The appeals on TikTok, which has become the most commonly-used social media platform for many Albanians, demonstrate a widespread and growing problem facing Albanian organised crime groups (OCGs) who have successfully hijacked the cannabis market across the UK.
They are pushing at an open door, with cannabis remaining the most widely used illegal drug in the UK and the biggest market in value.
About 2.5 million people aged between 16 and 59 reported using the drug last year in England and Wales, according to the Office for National Statistics. The National Crime Agency (NCA) estimates that yearly consumption is 240 tonnesvalued at £2.4 billion, and says cannabis cultivation in the UK “continues at an industrial scale with the capacity to produce large volumes generating high profits”.
Albanian gangs are now increasingly becoming victims of their own success since replacing the Vietnamese groups that previously had a stranglehold on the cannabis market. They are targeting each other, with several cases involving fatal robberies reaching the courts.
Advertisement
One concerned a fight that broke out in Bristol in May 2022, when two rival Albanian groups coincidentally targeted a third gang’s cannabis farm at the same time. Radian Lika, 36, and Brikel Palaj, 33, were given life sentences with a minimum term of 20 years after being convicted of fatally stabbing Aranit Lleshi, 32, in the fight over cannabis worth £95,000.
Three Albanian men were jailed for beating a man to death in 2021 after he tried to steal cannabis from a house they had turned into a drugs farm in Cardiff.
The drug wars show the lengths gangs will go to in order to protect their cannabis networks.
Albanian gangs had previously tended to specialise in cocaine, but the NCA said they had moved into cannabis because it was deemed “very low risk”. Unlike cocaine, it does not depend on cross-border smuggling because it can be grown for local markets.
The NCA said the switch began around the time of the Covid pandemic, when OCGs exploited the surge in small boat crossings to ferry hundreds of Albanian men over the Channel to work as drug runners, cannabis growers and criminal enforcers for the illegal farms.
Advertisement
In 2021 there was a sudden surge in Albanians crossing in small boats, with 815 arriving compared to just 54 the previous year. The following year, the total surged to 12,658 as they became the largest nationality making the journey.
Ged McCann, a senior NCA intelligence manager, said many individuals that are arrested in cannabis groves arrived in the country “a matter of days before on small boats”.
There have even been specialist “gardeners” recruited and smuggled into the country illegally to help set up high quality, fortified cannabis farms in rented houses and warehouses, protected by sophisticated security measures including barbed wire, or even staircases rigged to collapse if intruders enter.
There are signs, however, that Albanians are struggling to recruit at the same levels as they were. Albanian arrivals by small boats fell by 93 per cent to just 927 in 2023 and in the first nine months of last year a total of 497 arrived.
The Home Office has attributed the drop-off to a returns deal struck between the UK and Albanian governments two years ago that led to a significant increase in the number of illegal migrants sent back to the Balkan country.
Advertisement
There have also been more successful prosecutions against Albanian people-smugglers in the UK, and there are signs that the NCA and police are beginning to turn the tide against cannabis farmers.
This week two Albanian men were jailed after Merseyside police dismantled two cannabis farms containing 244 plants on the Wirral.
The previous week two Albanians were among a group of three who admitted being involved in running a cannabis farm at two rented houses in Hull. Police found 393 plants at one property and 521 at another five doors away. At both properties the electricity had been bypassed and abstracted illegally in an attempt to evade detection.
Besja Legisi and Kujtim Ndreca, who were responsible for tending to the plants, entered the UK illegally from Albania and will face deportation after serving their sentences.
TikTok has now removed the London Thieves account. It said its community guidelines prohibits violent threats, promotion and incitement of violence and criminal activities that may harm people, animals or property.
Advertisement
The company said it employs tens of thousands of safety professionals dedicated to keeping TikTok safe, including local experts that speak more than 70 languages and dialects including Albanian.
