A 73-year-old former guest house owner has been jailed for allowing a "professional" drug gang to run a £500,000 cannabis factory in her upmarket properties.

Yoko Banks rented out her posh homes in Harrogate, North Yorks, for “industrial” cannabis production “in the expectation of significant profit” a court heard.

Hertfordshire police had intervened in the Albanian gang’s plot who loaded up a rented Transit van with 30kg of cannabis plants worth about £300,000 and an Audi with £3,675 cash and an 18-carat-gold Rolex worth £28,000.

The vehicles that were heading to London were trapped by police in Hertfordshire on the M1 and were finally stopped on the M25 just after midnight on September 26 last year.

The Albanian drug gang who ran the factory have been jailed for a combined 22 years.

Banks and six gang members appeared for sentencing at Leeds Crown Court on Friday after they each admitted playing a part in the audacious, mega-money drugs plot.

Sellaj, Kujtim Brahaj, 50, Indrit Brahaj, 27, Bledar Elezaj, 36, Andi Kokaj, 23, and Erblin Elezaj, 31, admitted charges relating to the production and supply of cannabis but only at one property.

Banks, of Harrogate, admitted three counts of being concerned in the supply of cannabis.

Prosecutor Martin Bosomworth said the “professional” gang had invested tens of thousands into the three cannabis factories at Banks’s properties.

The gang even dug a trench outside a three-storey Edwardian villa to feed electricity cables to the house to power the cultivation system and bypass the electricity grid.

On one occasion, neighbours in the affluent street spotted the gang digging the ditch underneath a pavement and up the driveway.

When they asked them what they were doing, they were told they were laying cables “for a fast-fibre broadband connection”, the court heard.

Police were called to a five-bedroom villa on September 26 to reports of a disturbance in the street, and officers found 283 plants in the four growing rooms at the house.

A large crossbow and arrows were also found next to the front door.

There were other large grows at two of Banks’s other properties which had the “capability of producing industrial amounts” of highly potent skunk, the court heard.

The bust in Hertfordshire took place after the gang made a “hasty clearance” of any mature cannabis plants they could find before clearing the scene.

Although Banks was not involved in the cultivation, she had played a “facilitating” or advisory role in the plot, the court was told.

Banks - who had previous convictions for health-and-safety offences - was due to be paid at least £12,000 a month in rent for the three properties and was also receiving “high” deposits.

Jailing Banks for three-and-a-half years, Mr Bayliss told her: “You have in your time been a successful businesswoman.

“You were, at the time, in some financial difficulties which may explain why you were - a woman in your seventies, a widow with a number of health problems - prepared to get involved with a gang from London.

“You knew that by doing that you were bringing drugs and criminality to Harrogate, a town where you have lived and worked for many years.”

Banks, who owns a string of “highly marketable” properties in some of Harrogate’s most desirable areas, was jailed for three-and-a-half years.

Sellaj, who had been “directing operations”, was jailed for six years and nine months.

Erblin Elizaj was jailed for five years and two months and Indrit Brahaj was jailed for four years and four months.

Kujtim Brahaj and Bledar Elezaj were each jailed for three years for their lesser roles.

Andi Kokaj will be sentenced on Monday, August 16.