GoFuckYourself.com - Adult Webmaster Forum - In house weed growing operations taking over sacramento

Pot raids hit six more homes
Cheaper houses may have lured Bay Area ring to Sacramento area.
By Ryan Lillis -- Bee Staff Writer

Published 12:01 am PDT Saturday, September 2, 2006
Story appeared on Page A1 of The Bee

Get weekday updates of Sacramento Bee headlines and breaking news. Sign up here.

Print | E-Mail | Comments (15)

Drug Enforcement Administration agents seize marijuana plants Friday at a Natomas home as they investigate a suspected ring of pot farms. Sacramento Bee/Andy Alfaro

See additional images

With six more suburban Sacramento houses raided Friday, law enforcement officials are hopeful they are getting closer to taking down what they call an "extremely sophisticated organization" behind a massive marijuana-growing operation.

Since Aug. 3, federal and local agents have raided 15 houses in Elk Grove and six in Natomas, seizing more than 13,000 marijuana plants having a street value of more than $50 million, as well as hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of equipment, officials said Friday.

Authorities said the operation may have been pushed from the Bay Area to the Sacramento suburbs for the same reason many families move there: housing prices. Most of the homes raided were purchased for a price between $420,000 and $553,000, records show, far less than the average price for a single-family home in San Francisco. The properties could be subject to federal narcotics forfeiture.

Officials described the takedown as "unprecedented" for the Sacramento region. Five Bay Area residents have been indicted in connection with the operation, and documents filed earlier this week in federal court show the suspects may be linked to San Francisco's Chinatown.

Authorities suggested that the masterminds were attracted to suburbia on the theory that it offers a greater level of anonymity and isolation. If that was a motivation, however, the organizers underestimated their new neighbors, court documents show.

Elk Grove police received "numerous" tips from the community over the past month, said Officer Chris Trim, a department spokesman. One neighbor told authorities that "residents" of the homes showed up "every couple of weeks" and that they avoided other neighbors, according to a federal search warrant application filed this week in U.S. District Court.

And while detectives were on a stakeout of a home on Brienne Way in Elk Grove in August, a neighbor called one of the investigators to tell him a man was in the yard washing soil from his arms, documents show. That action, documents state, was "consistent with the actions of someone who had been handling soil in the cultivation of marijuana."

"The bottom line is that law-abiding citizens don't want this happening in their neighborhoods," said Gordon Taylor, assistant special agent in charge of the Sacramento office of the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. "It's troubling that you've got people from out of town coming in and plunking down to operate a marijuana factory."

Authorities said the homes had no furnishings. Police and agents confiscated growing lights, fans, soil and plants.

Authorities would not say whether they believe there is a connection between the owners of the raided homes and the operation. Seven people own more than one of the homes targeted in the raids, property records show.

None of the homeowners so far has been indicted.

Taylor said the DEA is "finding more and more connections to Southern California street gangs in outdoor grows," but would not say whether agents suspect gangs or organized crime are behind the local drug ring.

Documents show the network has ties to the Bay Area. In early August, undercover agents staking out the home on Brienne Way watched two men load 12 black garbage bags into the back of a white cargo van. Philip Yu, one of five people indicted, got behind the wheel and agents followed the van to a kung fu studio in San Francisco's Chinatown, according to the affidavits.

Another suspect, Wei Zhou, who lives in Chinatown, was the registered owner of the van, documents show.

"This is an extremely sophisticated organization from what we're seeing," Taylor said. "We're going to go wherever this investigation takes us. I'm hopeful we're starting to wrap our arms around this organization."

Authorities would not discuss where they believe the marijuana ended up after it was grown, but Taylor said "the potency can at times be much higher with indoor grows." Officials said the marijuana could have fetched $2,000 to $5,000 per pound on the street.

Taylor, whose office oversees drug enforcement in 34 counties between Bakersfield and the Oregon border, said the busts over the past few weeks were "absolutely unprecedented."

Elk Grove's Trim said the investigation took on a "domino effect" after the first tips started coming in. The new police department could afford the manpower, he said, because the city approved 10 slots in July for a street crime unit.

Neighbors on Pipit Way in Elk Grove suspected something was amiss with a house that sold earlier this year. A close-knit neighborhood, residents knew little about the new occupants. They woke up to the sound of a raid on the street Friday morning in which officials said 934 marijuana plants were seized.

Ludwig Fleming said he had helped the home's previous owner take care of her lawn, but now it was dried out.

"The plants are totally neglected, except for the plants inside, obviously," Fleming said.

Fleming said he had seen the new owners -- men in their 20s -- perhaps three times in the last year. Other neighbors said the men rebuffed attempts to talk, which drew even more attention.

Police and real estate agents have speculated that the culprits may have tried to find neighborhoods in which there had been a lot of resale activity -- that is, places where residents would be relatively new and unaware of their neighbors, or where new investors bought homes only to flip them for a quick profit.

The Sacramento Real Estate Statistics blog analyzed the neighborhoods of busted homes and found that they had an average of 20 house sales "mostly in the last two years."

The site speculated that a "flipper neighborhood would be the perfect place, since nobody who owns there really lives there."