Thread: Reekin' of reefer

Reekin' of reefer
$20M pot crew 'stunk out loud'
By LARRY CELONA, JESSICA SIMEONE and JEREMY OLSHAN

Last Updated: 10:13 AM, March 31, 2011

Posted: 2:16 AM, March 31, 2011

Ooh, that smell . . .

One whiff of a pot-stinking SUV driver was all the probable cause a DEA agent needed to bring down a massive upstate pot-growing operation.

"These guys stank; it was coming out of their pores," one investigator said of the 15 people busted yesterday in connection with the alleged hydroponic farm run out of seven Sullivan County homes.

"They stunk out loud," he said. "They were very pungent."

DEA agents, NYPD cops and members of the Sullivan County Sheriff's office wore protective gear to avoid getting contact highs from the veritable forest of 6,300 pot plants with a street value of $20 million taken from the homes.


FOLLOWING ODORS: Police and DEA agents march pungent pot-growing suspects into custody yesterday. The massive Sullivan County bust bagged 15 people.

It all started Tuesday, when DEA agent Kenneth Walsey approached the passengers of an SUV outside a suspected grow house in Mamakating and noticed the vehicle smelled like a Grateful Dead concert.

Another suspect, Mainor Goody-Bernal, then pulled up in a Lincoln Town Car and had marijuana crumbs on his shirt, the complaint alleges.

Agents called in the pungent aroma, and quickly got their search warrant, sources said.

"This seizure, the largest indoor marijuana grow operation of its kind in New York, exemplifies the sophistication with which these groups operate," DEA Special Agent in Charge John Gilbride said. "Marijuana remains a significant source of illegal income for drug-trafficking groups in the New York area."

The plants would account for the equivalent of 3 million joints, according to DEA spokeswoman Erin McKenzie-Mulvey.

Investigators had been casing one of the secluded grow houses in the woods due to the "extraordinary electric usage" billed to the home, according to a federal criminal complaint.

After sniffing the passengers out of the car, investigators found more than 700 marijuana plants in that house. Informants then provided the locations of the six other grow houses, each protected by locked iron gates uncharacteristic of the area, the complaint alleges.

Most of those arrested were illegal immigrants from South and Central America hired to harvest the crop, sources said.

Due to the immensity of the haul, investigators could not take the plants to the agency's lab in Chelsea, law-enforcement sources said. Instead, they will be housed in an undisclosed location in Brooklyn.

Each of the 15 defendants was arraigned in federal court in White Plains and held without bail yesterday evening.

If convicted, they face up to 10 years in prison, prosecutors said.

With additional reporting by Len Maniace and Lachlan Cartwright

jeremy.olshan@nypost.com

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/local/reek ... z1ICXbyTcu

ARREST, INCARCERATE, CONFISCATE, and then DEPORT...

What ? The illegals were only working in the fields just as our politicians want them too. Just the fields were inside a home.

Originally Posted by uniteasone

What ? The illegals were only working in the fields just as our politicians want them too. Just the fields were inside a home.

Just think how high the price of weed woudl be without these illegals to pick it for us. Why, it would lie rotting in the fields without them.

Once again just doing the jobs most americans wont ! Its so nice of these people to this for us!