70,000 watt grow house busted

[Guest]

Stealing power isn't how these big ops are getting busted ... if you know how to do it, it's not easy at all to detect. They only figure out the power theft when they get into the house, and sometimes they still don't figure it out. In my old neck of the woods, stealing power was a wopping 63$ dollar fine added to your electric bill, cheaper than a tkt for dog off the leash at the park.

 

[Harry Gypsna]

poor guy bollocks, no sympathy these organised big gangs r the fuckers who make us all look bad... stealing electricty and having traffiked children watching the crops....there have been 2 busts near to me in the past 3 weeks in these circumstances..... these ppl are not growers they are criminals and as such deserve all they fucking get.

please dont encourage electricity theft..we are growers not theives

 

[Guest]

in the UK youd get more jail for stealing the electric than u would for growing the plants

 

[Guest]

Shiva knows what's up

 

[yamaha_1fan]

Naw, lets get real for a second although you may not run your lights on 240 electric, guys running 70 lights do ... at 240 a light uses 4.8 amps, so your looking at 336 amps worth of light ... of course they were running half at a time that one is a no brainer, much easier to keep the house 'comfortable' lol. So now were down to 168 amps of 'lights on'.

Thats 168 amps just in lights if you had a pefect switch. Now what about all the pumps, fans, exhaust fans and A/C? Its also my understanding to be at 80% of total load and that would be 160 here.

It also seems like ALOT of work to make it work in a house versus a large warehouse or workshop on some land. Different rooms, plumbing,etc etc.

Plus the house was right on top of another house from the pic i saw.

the article said they paid 750k for the house. For that they could have purchased something commercial ina rural area. or a bunch of land with a workshop or barn or something. Then they could have put in some diesill generators

this large of a grow in this house seems dumb

 

[Verite]

Maybe shiva can help you find that one elusive news article that shows just one big juice stealing operation that went undetected for years.

 

[Guest]

Thats 168 amps just in lights if you had a pefect switch. Now what about all the pumps, fans, exhaust fans and A/C? Its also my understanding to be at 80% of total load and that would be 160 here.

It also seems like ALOT of work to make it work in a house versus a large warehouse or workshop on some land. Different rooms, plumbing,etc etc.

Plus the house was right on top of another house from the pic i saw.

the article said they paid 750k for the house. For that they could have purchased something commercial ina rural area. or a bunch of land with a workshop or barn or something. Then they could have put in some diesill generators

this large of a grow in this house seems dumb

I agree

Maybe shiva can help you find that one elusive news article that shows just one big juice stealing operation that went undetected for years.

Maybe.. or maybe you can tell me how pg&e randomly detects power theft/bypassing. Or maybe tell me how it's done and then tell me what technology the electricity companies have to detect it. I'm always willing to learn something new.

Again wherever you're from things may be different. Knowledge is a beautiful thing but it has it's limitations - you only know what you know. I know cali.. up and down. You wanna tell me it's the electrical theft that's getting people busted even tho the first of these busts that started around august of last year says otherwise. Even tho i'm telling you from experience that it's not the case you wanna use agenda based articles that frequently lie like hell as your shining proof. Rather than saying "Hey man i actually have NO experience on this matter, maybe i'm wrong" you wanna take jabs at me? Well damn, i gotta bow out gracefully.. you win fam

 

[Verite]

Jeez dude get a grip.. all I did was ask you to back up a fraction of your smack talk with one little piece of evidence that what your saying might be credible. Did you find it? No .. all you got is more smack talk about how I dont know what Im talking about and how your situation is so secretly special that it defies all historical data on the subject. When theres barely any history to support big operations going undetected for years you claim not only that but stealing electricity to boot.

Like I said before if it was as commonplace as you say there would be more evidence of it then just smack talk on internet stoner fourms.

... That's common practice for large scale my man. Nobody pays for electricity unless they have to. I've seen 50k warehouses and multiple 15 - 30k houses with stolen power. Also 30k warehouses with paid for electricity. All operating for YEARS. Nobody cares and nobody stops it. In cali of course...

 

[Guest]

LMFAO! tell him verite

 

[Guest]

Fine by me...

Fine by me...

Jeez dude get a grip.. all I did was ask you to back up a fraction of your smack talk with one little piece of evidence that what your saying might be credible. Did you find it? No .. all you got is more smack talk about how I dont know what Im talking about and how your situation is so secretly special that it defies all historical data on the subject. When theres barely any history to support big operations going undetected for years you claim not only that but stealing electricity to boot.

Like I said before if it was as commonplace as you say there would be more evidence of it then just smack talk on internet stoner fourms.

Is that your long-winded way of saying "I have no idea what i'm talking about when it comes to large scale indoor grows"? If so i hear you loud and clear

I really tried to not continue this but i'll do this for the 1,990 viewers of this thread and invite ANYBODY out there to teach me otherwise about this. I only know what i know so school me somebody. I invite Verite or anybody else to tell me how pg&e is detecting electricity theft by bypassing. I really wanna know. To the best of my knowledge they have no way to detect it. The closest thing i've seen is when people somehow blow the transformer for the area multiple times then they attempt to figure things out somehow. I don't even know their process for that. Anybody wanna teach me something?

As far as evidence..well, i have my experience but i don't think that's good enough. It's kinda hard to find proof when years of being smart (and a little lucky) keep you OUT of the news

I do have several articles here that offer no proof to your "Theory" tho:

(you may need to register (free) to view these)
http://www.news10.net/storyfull2.aspx?storyid=19751
http://dwb.sacbee.com/content/news/story/14315564p-15227031c.html
http://dwb.sacbee.com/content/news/story/14305184p-15185878c.html
http://dwb.sacbee.com/content/news/story/14312075p-15214712c.html
http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_5573818
http://www.dailybulletin.com/news/ci_5492495

The last one is gold. It has the smoking gun against your theory Here's a few snippets

"Nearly every room of the home was packed with $60,000-$80,000 worth of lights, pumps, filters, timers, and other equipment used in the cultivation of marijuana, said Werner."

More bullshit agenda based propaganda. 80k worth of lights in every room? 80k worth of light kits at retail (500 at most) would be about 160 lights per room We can break it down however you want and still can't get that number..

Click...
"Additionally, the entire house had been skillfully rewired to allow the growers to draw extremely high amounts of electricity without either paying for it or arousing suspicion from the utility company, Werner explained."

Boom!
"The home, which officials believe was purchased in January, has drawn over $7,000 in stolen electricity from the Edison power grid since February, said Whitten.

Edison officials said a power transformer serving the neighborhood had been overloaded by four times its normal capacity and was ready to fail at any time, leaving the whole neighborhood in darkness, said Whitten. "

So basically they were stealing the power and nobody knew at all until the busts. Why am i not surprised. Unfortunately they were stealing too much and about to overload the Transformer but that never happened. Again, in my experience this is the main way people get busted stealing power and it rarely happens. Take note how the police AND the electric company were clueless to the theft and would have remained clueless until a transformer overloaded

These are all recent busts and the law is operating off of anonymous tips from citizens or deals made with the recently nabbed. One particular case even has all (20) the houses connected by ONE realtor and i'm sure they're playing connect the dots with that.

Now if you can find ME a article that says so and so got busted because such and such electric company knew so and so was stealing power - and it's not related to Transformer Explosion. Then i'll give you your props. Unlike you i have some humility and have no problem standing corrected

LMFAO! tell him verite

Kick your legs up any higher Cheerleader and you'll be able to use your ankles for earmuffs

 

[Rosy Cheeks]

I actually don't feel sorry for these guys. It's clear they were operating for a crime syndicate. Two guys setting up an enormous grow like that? In a country they don't even speak the language? How did they end up there? Where did they get the money to buy the house from? How were they going to distribute the merchandise?

It was just a mob operation. It could have been heroin, hookers or human traffic, it happened to be pot plants.
These are exactly the type of guys that make LEO shit their pants out of joy. Just another pretext for the legal system to diabolize Cannabis, and once they've tied it in with organized crime, they can justify their budgets and WOD, because of its relations with crime.

Who does it come out on in the end?

 

[Sauron The Blue]

intresting thread, glad to see a few familiar faces.

S4vvy, you crack me up, your style of demonstrating your point seems very familiar to my own, a fun read to say the least, looking forward to much more.

Your mostly right on point about the power theft. Half the time they dont ever even know about the power theft. If the agency that raided your home doesnt have a protocol that involves checking for utility theft, and it isnt overly clear that service is being stolen, it will go un-noticed. Much as the policy for each service station and power company will vary from place to place.

Sadly there is a growing market for revenue-recouping companies that supply technology and develop investigative tools to assist a utility company in detecting, and/or preventing future power theft. Much like software and media piracy it will be an ever evolving game from here on out as there are more people who need to steal power than there are people who can supply it.

There are web-based software applications that allow meter reading vehicles to check a residential grid against a service distribution table at the service center to see if there is more draw than there is output. They have these to prevent overloads of transformers and the like, but have re-engineered em to speed up the process of finding who steals power drasticly. It still comes down to making a field visit to the site in question to gurantee that the power has been stolen.

Keep in mind that "stealing power" is much like stealing other products and services. Ive seen people walk right up to a car and steal it in broad daylight, and others smash the windows in, and others run up on the driver with a gun. Point is the method can vary but still yeild same result, or much worse results. If you run an orange 100' 3 prong extension cord from your neighbors outdoor receptacle to your grow room window, youll get busted. If you buy two apartments and rewire one to supply the other, you might lessen ya chance of getting busted or increase the time ya have to get away, a recent setup on here had 20 some apartments rigged this way before busted.



I can think of several articles off the top of my head that have popped up online over the years that involve people being busted soley by power theft being detected. I can remember one specific non-herb case where a guy was stealing his power by doing a simple mod to his meter, and his monthyl usage would stay the same regardless of how much he used. After twenty six years or so they wondered what the deal was and went to his place and saw the meter and nailed em. If I can locate a few of these ill be happy to post em.

ive never stolen power, but there are a LOT of people who do in california and get away with it for a very long time. I know far more who pay $2-5k bills every month, with a smile on their face the whole time.

and what in the world is with these people with 100amp or less service..i dont even see subpanels that small out here...


peace!

 

[Sauron The Blue]

here is one company that provides support for theft detection: http://www.detectent.com/

and ge just got a patent two months ago for a circuit to detect some forms of theft: http://tdworld.com/info_systems/vendor_updates/ge-meter-patent/

and this place looks at the service location as a customer profile to determine how likely they are to be stealing power, regardless of meter readings:
http://www.electricenergyonline.com/article.asp?m=9&mag=37&article=289

Examples of Customer Models that have been deployed are:

• Slope Deviation
• Load Ratio Deviation
• Energy Ratio Deviation
• Heating Gas Deviation
• Meter Capacity Deviation
• Building Capacity Deviation
• Excessive Seasonal Variation
• Bent Disk Profile
• Credit Risk Profile
• Blown Fuse Profile
• Erratic Profile

*plz dont use any of the info in some of these articles to steal juice.

 

[sleepyrz]

i live in a neighborhood where 4 of us grow out of us 4 only one is runing large
the other 3 of us run 2kw at the max myself not even running 1 kw at the moment altho i have 10kw of lights and equipment the area seems to hot for my liking at the moment

my neighbor across the street is running 50KW in lights alone 2 5 ton a/c units

all ballasts are done in 240 of course

and yes they are flip flopped

the way these people do it is they buy the house with the transformer in the backyard

and mod it themselves

duh

and as for them being caught for stealing the electricity which they are in fact doing

pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff i say

theyve been doing it for 3 years now

my point is

getting your facts from your local news channel makes you look like a retard

stop preaching the propaganda son

i am in no way associated with their grows

i wont even ask them for weed

they are in a ring of houses if you know what i mean

they will be taken down by a snitch one day

i have told them as much

they seem to think it wont happen for some reason

im just waiting for the day the suburbans arrive and they kick in the door

it will happen

o it will

its already happened 3 times this year alone with similar rings in my area

so just a warning to anyone out there in a ring

cut now and run

go do it by yourself

by joining a ring youve already raised your chances of being caught by like 300000000000%

because we all know what the first rule of growing is:

shut your fucking mouth

 

[Guest]

I don't think the 40 something year-old asian dudes blowing up 750K houses are very clever at all, pretty darn wierd, heck they suck at driving, why they think they pull off something that huge is beyond me. 750k would buy a sweet parcel in norcal, and plenty of diesel.

Verite -- you'd be amazed at how many people steal power and get away with it, and no you won't read about it in the paper. I wouldn't advocate power theft to the average home grower. It has it's place in some situations, in areas you wouldn't want a 3000$ bill let's say. Some people think big is beautiful

 

[Guest]

sauron -- interesting links, at some point they might actually put meters on houses you can't tamper with, at present though not easy at all to catch they would have to pull the meter out to inspect it which just doesn't happen if you pay your bills. Most meters at this point are really easy to tamper with and I'm not talking about flipping them upside down.

 

[Andyo]

7kw more like

7kw more like

and electricity companys are not so smart. the big boys would happily pay for the electric but the power comp would inform on them.

they laid a 200 amp 3 phase 415 cable for me.
and i stole about 30 kw for 7 years.its not about the money its about saying fuck you bush and fuck you pigs .oh and fuck the speed limit.get the worker beasts of the roads so i can go racing.

 

[Andyo]

wake up shiva dude

wake up shiva dude

we hard wire on before the meter .tampering with the meter lol.
no offense just wise up

 

[Guest]

Listen, man. Believe what you want and i'll continue to know what i know I know what i've done in the past (i have no grow now), i know what my friends/associates are doing, and you know what you read in the news

I mean you no disrespect but I think we're on two completely different levels of knowledge when it comes to big ops.

For the record i'd like to say that everybody who goes big isn't stealing power - some steal, some pay, and some use generators. Not everybody knows how to do it, and many people are ignorant of the risks involved. Just about all the people i've met who know how to do it - do it. People i know are still in business with no issues from the law or the electric company. Nothings changed except they've gotten more places and stole more juice..

S4vvy, I agree with you 100%. If you've never been involved in big ops (especially ones in CA) then you don't really have a clue. Especially the people saying (everyone will get caught, it's just a matter of time, etc...) LOL funny stuff.

You rarely will ever hear of someone that has been doing it for years get caught, I mean I NEVER do and thats because they know what they are doing. It's not hard to steal power, and I've known buddies to do it for very long periods of time. It all boils down to this- You have to know what the fuck your doing. There are big ops EVERYWHERE in CA, I lived in a small town in Northern CA for years, only 6000 people in the whole place and I can honestly say that almost half those people were growing cannabis. People that have been doing big grows for 20, 30+ plus years.

Also, If you think that it's crazy people could grow all the weed and find people to buy it....believe me, people wanting 100's of pounds at once are more common then you think.

Another thing, alot of people would rather grow 1400 plants between 3 houses then a huge plot outside, a few reasons being- Indoor generates more money per pound then outdoor (can be upwards of twice as much), you have alot more control over climate, your inside away from public eye, you are closer to sources so you don't have to travel/transport weed as much/far, outdoor is once a year (usually, so you can't generate as much over the year), and the market gets totally flooded once outdoor harvest happens so you get less on your investment.

 

[sleepyrz]

once a year outdoors

HA!

you can do at least 2

and if you are southern like florida you can do 3 crops outdoors a year easy