A Kilburn drug accomplice who helped a cannabis baron become a millionaire by growing skunk in old lorry trailers must pay back more than £14,000 or face another nine months behind bars.

Steven Gizzi, 61, of Cambridge Avenue, was jailed for three years nine months in 2012 for helping Terrence Nolan to convert five lorry trailers into ‘highly sophisticated’ cannabis production lines.

Nolan, 58, claimed he had been working for Gizzi when he was arrested inside one of the lorries rigged up to grow drugs at an industrial unit in Grays, Essex, in April 2009.

He was jailed for nine years for operating two drugs factories capable of turning over a £3.5 million a year and must pay back more than £30,000 or face in jail.

The men were caught after police acting on information mounted a surveillance operation on Nolan.

In one trailer officers discovered 1002 rooted cannabis plants in boxes, while a second was being used to dry the plants and a third was in the process of being fitted with insulation slabs.

Gizzi and Nolan had been spotted buying cannabis growing equipment at a hydroponics shop called Future Gardens, in Hainault.

Nolan was also linked to a cannabis factory uncovered in a dilapidated farm building in Tomkyns Lane, in Upminster, where officers found 1,020 plants on a trailer worth £229,000.

Prosecutor Roger Smart said: “Because of the sophisticated method used to grow the plants it is estimated it could have produced three crops a year with a total value at street level of £3.5m”.

Gizzi, pleaded guilty to conspiracy to produce cannabis and conspiracy to supply cannabis between January and September 2009.

He’s been ordered to stump up £14,447.30 within six months after earning £58,050 from the criminal enterprise.