Complaints from neighbours about activity at a house on their street led police to a man running three separate cannabis growing operations.
Thanks to the information given to officers they uncovered a cannabis plantation in a Rhondda village, another at property in Cardiff, and more cultivation at an address in Newport.
A judge described such drug factories as a "scourge" on communities, and said the gangs running them ploughed the proceeds they were making into other forms of criminal activity.
The Lithuanian man in charge of the growing business - and a fellow countryman he recruited to work as a gardener - have been jailed, and now face deportation.
Swansea Crown Court heard that in July last year police executed a search warrant at a house in East Road in Tylorstown following concerns about noises and smells at the property from people living nearby.
Laurence Jones, prosecuting, said officers found two rooms in the house had been given over to the production of cannabis, with one room converted into a growing room and one into a drying room. In total officers recovered 95 mature plants, and the court heard the potential yield from the crop was worth up to £100,000. Also in the house was 41-year-old Aurimas Straksys.
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The investigation then led officers to Straksys' house in Lambert Street in Newport where they found further plants growing in the attic, and then to another property linked to the defendant in Moira Street in Roath, Cardiff. At the Cardiff house police again found a sophisticated two-room operation with 49 plants and various stages of maturity worth up to £51,000 along with another Lithuanian man, 32-year-old Andrius Kalenda.
Mr Jones said in total police recovered a total of 152 plants with a potential yield worth up to £159,000, and it was the Crown's case that the three properties were a commercial operation with Straksys as the organiser. The prosecutor said Kalenda had been recruited by Straksys and was "at the very least a trusted gardener", but that there was nothing to link him to the other properties in the case. He added: "This was all discovered because people in Tylorstown complained about the noise and smell coming from the house."
Straksys, of Lambert Street, Newport, had previously pleaded guilty to two counts of producing cannabis and been convicted of a third count at trial when he appeared in the dock for sentencing. Kalenda, of Moira Road, Roath, Cardiff, had previously pleaded guilty to one count of producing cannabis. Neither man has any previous convictions.
William Bebb, for Straksys, said the defendant was a hard working man who had been employed in the building business all his life, and "regrets his actions". He said his client drove a 12-year-old Audi car and was not somebody who lived an ostentatious lifestyle.
Jeffrey Jones, for Kalenda, said his client had been out of work when Straksys had offered him the chance of employment in Wales as a gardener. He said the defendant now wanted to go back to his family in Lithuania.
Judge Geraint Walters said cannabis plantations were a "scourge" on communities, with criminals earning huge sums of money from operating them which they then pump into other sorts of criminal activities. He said such behaviour needed to be deterred.
Starksys was sentenced to four years in prison, and Kalenda to two years and three months.
The court heard both defendants will be referred to the foreign nationals offender removal unit.
