The 43-year-old ex-taxi driver avoided a prison sentence after he admitted he was running the ‘£50,000 drugs farm’ to pay off his drug debts.
Mark, who was running the ‘drug farm’ from his attic, was arrested at his Greater Manchester residence on April 3rd last year.
The police reportedly raided his three-bedroom, semi-detached, Bolton house and found 56 plants in the loft. Police officers also found text messages linking him to the supply of the drug, where he ‘offered a price of £60 for 10g cannabis’.
Currently Mark is claiming £71-a-week in state benefits and yesterday his two-year jail term was suspended for two years after he admitted producing cannabis.
Mark was also offered to complete 300 hours unpaid work and pay £210 in costs and a victim surcharge.
The Mirror reports his counsel Wayne Jackson told the hearing in mitigation: ''This is a situation where Mr Croft is being used by other people to run an operation.
"Due to the difficulty he has had because of his links to the celebrity culture in the past, that pressure from others was brought to bear on him to have those drugs in his house.
''He was being told that this was the way to pay his debts - if not these people were going to the press and the cat would have been out of the bag.''