TWO best friends have been jailed after threatening a man on Facebook over a cannabis debt.


Ashley Franks, aged 27, and Ryan Ormandy, aged 27, both of Stage Lane, Lymm, threatened victim and neighbour Thomas Heatley.


Warrington Crown Court heard on Thursday how Ormandy had supplied Mr Heatley, aged 23, with cannabis worth between £160 and £180 last year.


Owen Jones, prosecuting, said when Heatley did not pay the money, Ormandy sent abusive text messages.


In one he said ‘I’m going to war. You better be in or whoever answers the door is going in my boot.
On January 21, the court heard a message was sent from the Facebook account of Franks.


It contained more abuse and the threat: “If you don’t ring me up, I’m coming to your mums. If you don’t believe me, see what happens. I don’t care who’s in your house.”


When Mr Heatley returned home that day, the two defendants were waiting outside his house in a Vauxhall Vectra. Franks was driving, despite being banned.


Mr Jones said: “Ormandy made more threats regarding needing the money, or he would face violence.”


At 6pm, Ormandy and Franks returned and police were called.


They found a cannabis factory in the barn conversion home of Franks.


It contained 41 plants, which Mr Jones said would yielded between 1.14kg and 3.44kg of cannabis, worth up to £40,000 on the street.


During a police interview Franks made no comment, with Ormandy reading a prepared statement.


Ormandy, who has seven previous convictions for 11 offences, later pleaded guilty to blackmail.


Franks, who has 20 previous convictions for 25 offences, pleaded guilty to blackmail, driving while disqualified and producing a class B drug with intent to supply.


The court heard Mr Heatley was familiar with the drugs world, and that Ormandy had become ‘frustrated by his failure to pay’.


Franks was said to have ‘got into a fight that wasn’t his own’.


Recorder S J KIlleen jailed Franks for a total of 22 months in prison, and banned him from driving for three years.


Ormandy was jailed for six months for blackmail, and three-and-a-half-years, for a separate GBH charge, to run consecutively.