Uh oh NYC! The prices just went up!

[PoppinFresh]

http://www.newsday.com/news/local/ny-libust0830,0,2408562.story?track=rss
http://www.newsday.com/news/local/ny-libust0830-pg,0,7765379.photogallery

Police bust drug empire in Suffolk
BY ALFONSO A. CASTILLO | [email protected]

Three Suffolk County residents have been "living large" off the profits of a hydroponic marijuana harvesting ring that operated out of five warehouses, producing more more than 1,800 pot plants and $5 million since 1999, federal authorities said.

Robert Dillon, 33, of 139 Anchorage Dr. in West Islip, his live-in girlfriend Alicia Peterman, 27, and Anthony Pettigrew, 26, of 21 Peters Lane in North Babylon were arraigned in federal court Wednesday on charges of money laundering and conspiracy to possess and distribute marijuana.

"It's a significant operation, obviously. And it's a significant case," said Joseph Foy, spokesman for the Internal Revenue Service Criminal Investigation bureau. "The goal now is ... to take down their financial operation. Basically, to take away all their toys."

Erin Mulvey, a spokeswoman for the federal Drug Enforcement Administration in New York, said about 100 plants can bring "hundreds of thousands of dollars" from one harvest.

The arrests were the culmination of a probe by local and federal authorities stretching back about eight years. Seized along the way were drugs, growing materials, vehicles and financial documents.

Dillon and Pettigrew were held without bail Wednesday. Foy said both men face life in prison if convicted. Dillon's attorney declined to comment.

Peterman, who faces just money laundering charges, was released on $250,000 bond. Her attorney declined to comment.

Pettigrew's attorney, William Wexler, of Babylon, said the case against his client is "reed thin" and is mostly built on old Suffolk drug charges for which he has already pleaded guilty and been sentenced.

A 46-page federal complaint against the three defendants details an extravagant pot growing operation masterminded by Dillon, a "career drug dealer" with two prior arrests on drug charges. One criminal informant quoted in the complaint said Dillon was known as "Midas Rob" because "everything he touches turns to gold." Another spoke of Dillon pulling back his bed mattress once to show off that half of it was covered in cash.

Dillon ran his pot empire for months at a time out of one warehouse, then would abandon it and leave all his equipment behind "when he felt his operation had been compromised," the complaint says.

But time and time again, authorities caught on to Dillon. In December 1999, police responded to a reported burglary at his first warehouse in Deer Park to find it had been abandoned. Left behind were "plastic buckets, growing paraphernalia, carbon dioxide tanks and high intensity grow light bulbs," the complaint said.

Authorities discovered his second warehouse in North Babylon in June 2005 after the fire department responded to a complaint about the smell of gasoline coming from the building. Despite Dillon's attempts to keep firefighters from entering, they did, and they discovered "a room containing a large quantity of marijuana plants" and other growing materials, including a gasoline-operated generator.

Records found at that location led police to his third warehouse, in West Babylon, where more growing equipment was seized. Police first learned of Pettigrew's involvement after observing him meet with Dillon there.

The fourth warehouse, also in West Babylon, was discovered in June 2006 after an assistant East Farmingdale fire chief noticed smoke billowing from it. Firefighters broke a window to enter the warehouse, and found an overheated gasoline generator and "what appeared to be an elaborate marijuana cultivating operation."

In February, the landlord at Dillon's fifth warehouse in Bohemia let himself in to repair a leak and found inside "the remains" of a pot factory.

Foy said he was unaware of how the defendants made their money from the drugs but that plenty of it was made. Using the names of other people, including Peterman and their own mothers, Dillon and Pettigrew bought various luxury cars, a boat and real estate, the complaint says.

"It's not about the drugs, it's a financial crime," Foy said. "The drugs was the means to do the criminal element."

Staff writers Brandon Bain, Anthony Destefano and Michael Frazier contributed to this story.

 

[dubmaster]

If they had made 5 million and was STILL running warehouses...
they are nothing but idiots.

 

[PoppinFresh]

If they had made 5 million and was STILL running warehouses...
they are nothing but idiots.

i don't follow your reasoning.. why wouldn't they keep running it?

 

[Guest]

A classic LEO tactic,don't bust them when you find out they're breaking the law,bust them after assets are accrued for forfeiture sake.

 

[Guest]

yes they dont want to rob you until you make some money...sick but true...its not about wrong or rite its about money how funny

 

[Hal]

I think that total of 1800 plants must be a typo....that would only be 200 plants each year....and that spread amongst a few different locations? That doesn't sound like such a huge operation to me.

 

[Guest]

people shouldn't be greedy if they are running an op like that...they should have just lived simply till they had the cash they wanted, then shut everything down...its kind of a scumbag move to grow somewhere then abandon all your shit...

 

[greenhead]

Yet another reason to grow your own !

As for the prices going up in NY, from what I understand, the prices there are kind of ridiculously insane to begin with. Also, I can't say that I feel bad for those people who were caught, they're not growing out of love for the weed.

 

[Guest]

Bottom line, dumb or not, for the love of weed or not - these people need our support!

I'm going to volunteer my room, right now, for what all of us do when faced with needing to stand up for what we believe in and protest.... A MUSIC FESTIVAL.

So I've put on a few GrDead mp3's and am loading up a bowl now.... let's protest!

 

[Guest]

American Beauty houseparty!

 

[Verite]

Bah, they stung one op out of 1,000 running in the area. I also remember when I was buying I had one of a dozen different close connections and each one of them had a few of their own so finding something never took too long.

 

[Dr.Diamonds]

Reading this article, and as successful as this bust may be for the authorities, it makes you wonder how many REAL intelligent grow ops are out there running without a glitch for years.

I mean look at some of the points, had prior drug convictions, had a street name of "Midas Rob", stories of him pulling back a mattress to reveal stacks of cash, smell of gasoline from one op, smoke billowing from another... I mean a local cop would have to do as little as shake down a local high school kid buying a dime buy in the area, to get the scoop on 'Rob'
Does this seem like someone halfway intelligent to you? He might as well have put a sign up over the warehouse that said "bust me".

When dealing with marijuana , the margins imo, are way too low. I think once they made their first million, they should have said "aight we havent got caught yet, lets not push our luck", and moved on with that mill, invested it in a meaningful way, and enjoyed life from there.

 

[SmokeyPufmaster]

I like that last line by the fed. Since when did it become a financial crime to buy luxury cars, boats and real estate? I guess all the CEO's who own these items were just called crooks. And since when did it get illegal to buy items with your ill-gotten gains?

Another point "100 plants can bring "hundreds of thousands of dollars from one harvest."

Well I better get busy, what incentive! I'm gonna be rich in eight months peoples!

 

[DickAnubis]

This is a very interesting story. As some have mentioned the numbers don't add up and these growers were very loose and fast with their ops.
I wonder, if you could prove that the Leo should have busted you but held off until you got bigger, could you win some sort of legal right to be tried at a lesser degree.

I agree with KLUTTER that we still should morally support these growers just for growing.

SMOKEY, it became a federal crime to use illegally gained monies to buy legit items in the late 1920's in efforts to catch bootleggers. Many of the US money laundering laws come from this time.

Good thread.

PEACE DA

 

[PoppinFresh]

This is a very interesting story. As some have mentioned the numbers don't add up and these growers were very loose and fast with their ops.
I wonder, if you could prove that the Leo should have busted you but held off until you got bigger, could you win some sort of legal right to be tried at a lesser degree.

I agree with KLUTTER that we still should morally support these growers just for growing.

SMOKEY, it became a federal crime to use illegally gained monies to buy legit items in the late 1920's in efforts to catch bootleggers. Many of the US money laundering laws come from this time.

Good thread.

PEACE DA

possibly entrapment.. not like they had to wait to apprehend. everything after the initial crime was basically allowed to take place. i don't see how anyone can be held guilty of something they were allowed to do. it's different if they were caught and did it again. or maybe they were investigating and looking for higher ups in the organization. but if you've already got the boss red handed and you know the underlings, then what's the point of waiting all of these years.

HOWEVER, i am seriously thinking the father, the former fire chief dude, had a lot to do with what was goin on as well. a lot of that money was laundered thru the parents. it may be a case where there were more people in on this and people got too damn wreckless so they had to shut it down. i would go so far as to think the local police were getting a cut for it to go on this long!

this is where the damn DEA, FBI, and CIA need to friggin step and do their jobs - when city officials are the criminals!

 

[dutchmasters420]

the kid drives a amg benz and a navi on rims and lives at home. A couple years ago when the guy got busted in the factories, they had a ton of premature shit that they pulled before the cops came back, it was still better then beatsers adn we were getting it for dirt cheap.

 

[Mr. Nevermind]

SMOKEY, it became a federal crime to use illegally gained monies to buy legit items in the late 1920's in efforts to catch bootleggers. Many of the US money laundering laws come from this time

Tell that to the Kennedy family, lol. They been living off bootleg money for decades and they are americas "first family" you know the whole Camelot thing.

My main issue is.... who is the victim in this crime? I mean besides th egovernment not being able to get its greedy hands on tax dollars i dont see a crime. Noone dies from pot, He rented out old warehouses which helps the owners of the warehouses and the economy in general, He used alot of supplies of which im sure were purchased in NY state, also helping local stores with big purchases.

noone got hurt by the production of the pot. Hell what the should do is go shut down a coors factory. they produce enough beer to slam a whole state into a guard rail behind the wheel and noone says a thing about that. Stupid ass laws







Nevermind

 

[PoppinFresh]

SMOKEY, it became a federal crime to use illegally gained monies to buy legit items in the late 1920's in efforts to catch bootleggers. Many of the US money laundering laws come from this time

Tell that to the Kennedy family, lol. They been living off bootleg money for decades and they are americas "first family" you know the whole Camelot thing.

My main issue is.... who is the victim in this crime? I mean besides th egovernment not being able to get its greedy hands on tax dollars i dont see a crime. Noone dies from pot, He rented out old warehouses which helps the owners of the warehouses and the economy in general, He used alot of supplies of which im sure were purchased in NY state, also helping local stores with big purchases.

noone got hurt by the production of the pot. Hell what the should do is go shut down a coors factory. they produce enough beer to slam a whole state into a guard rail behind the wheel and noone says a thing about that. Stupid ass laws







Nevermind

dont forget the taxes paid to purchase everything from the pots used to the cars driven. so the govt always gets a cut regardless.

 

[Mr. Nevermind]

dont forget the taxes paid to purchase everything from the pots used to the cars driven. so the govt always gets a cut regardless.

true, so only crime really was the inability of the government to tax pot. what a joke. Alcohol factories produce something that kills countless people, ruins lives due to addiction and the woners are treated as respected business men. Pot gorwers dont hurt anyone with what they produce and are treated as murderers. ****ing sad




Nevermind

 

[equaticAPE]

the kid drives a amg benz and a navi on rims and lives at home. A couple years ago when the guy got busted in the factories, they had a ton of premature shit that they pulled before the cops came back, it was still better then beatsers adn we were getting it for dirt cheap.

Realy? i ,mean it was commercial hydro, what is the diffrence between that and nuckers? Long island is full of growers especialy out east, i would hate to have to deal with some WT from babylon- the reason they kept growing after 5 million is cause five mill on LI is like 500K anywhere else. AH whatever- it block walls and bars for them now.