High-Tech Heists: Drone Gang That Hunted Cannabis Farms with Thermal Cameras is Jailed

A sophisticated criminal enterprise that used high-tech drones to hunt rival drug dealers has been dismantled, with six members of the gang now behind bars. The London-based crew deployed drones equipped with heat-seeking cameras to pinpoint the location of illegal cannabis farms across the country, before assembling teams to launch violent raids and steal the valuable crops.

The gang’s supposedly advanced operation came to a spectacularly clumsy end during a botched robbery in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. After a resident spotted a man in a balaclava climbing into a house, police arrived to find the street full of the gang’s vehicles. The ensuing chaos saw a high-speed police pursuit, and one member, Gakom Yackobi, breaking his own wrist after a failed attempt to escape from a bathroom window.

Inside the property, officers uncovered the gang’s target: a cannabis farm of over 250 plants, with a potential street value easily exceeding £125,000. They also found evidence of the group’s violent methods, with the court hearing that the man tending the crop had a knife held to his throat during the takeover.

At Nottingham Crown Court, Dichrije Elliel and Andrew Thomas were convicted of conspiracy to commit robbery, while Donnell Quarry, Addil Elmi, Khalid Omar, and Gakom Yackobi pleaded guilty to the same charge. The sentences handed down ranged from two years and four months to a maximum of five years in jail for Elliel.

In her sentencing, Recorder Penelope Stanistreet-Keen delivered a final, humiliating verdict on the gang’s self-image. While acknowledging their crimes were serious, she told the defendants they were not the shadowy figures of fiction, but simply “young men who get together… to steal cannabis plants,” concluding bluntly, “You are not the gangsters you think you are.”