Homegrown: Seemingly innocuous residences house pot farms in trend taking root in Marin

Homegrown: Seemingly innocuous residences house pot farms in trend taking root in Marin


Gary Klien
Article Launched: 08/11/2007 11:39:08 PM PDT



Owner Frederic Saland cleans up his rental home on Chase Street in Novato, which was ruined last month in a fire that revealed an elaborate indoor pot-growing operation run by his tenant, unbeknown to him. The fire was sparked by a utility meter rigged to steal electricity to power lights and other equipment. (IJ photo/Frankie Frost)



Until a few weeks ago, Frederic Saland owned a tidy rental property in Novato with three bedrooms, two baths and a neatly landscaped yard.

Now he owns a charred shell with blown-out windows, a gutted interior and a roof full of holes.

The house at 1208 Chase St. was ruined last month after a fire was sparked by the utility meter - which investigators said was bypassed to steal electricity for a sprawling indoor marijuana farm operated by Saland's tenant. Now the renter is gone, the house is uninhabitable and Saland is left to deal with the insurance adjusters and contractors.

"I'm out months of aggravation, and very probably my insurance will go up in perpetuity. I'll be paying more forever," said Saland, a Novato resident who owns several rental properties. "And, of course, I'll be paranoid forever. É The cost of what society sees as a boy-will-be-boys crime is not measurable. When you're the victim of a crime, you carry that, and it will influence your thoughts and actions for the rest of your life."

The incident highlighted what police say is a statewide trend taking root in Marin County: the use of residences, often very expensive residences, as massive hydroponic factories for extremely potent marijuana.

Indoor farms allow growers to discreetly harvest four times or more a year, under controlled conditions that produce stronger marijuana, than once-a-year outdoor harvests that are more vulnerable to weather, stray hikers and police surveillance aircraft.

"This idea of indoor cultivation seems to be a new trend," said Novato police Sgt. Dave Jeffries, who recently completed a three-day federal course on the subject. "It keeps it out of sight. It allows them to control the climate. And when you're about to do this 12-month grow season, you can turn out a lot more and a lot more potent stuff."

In Marin, six indoor marijuana farms have been shut down in the past two months alone, including:

- A 3,000-square-foot home on Tamalpais Road in Fairfax, where police found 900 plants valued at $270,000 on June 20. Three suspects were arrested in the case.

- The home on Chase Street in Novato, where police found 75 marijuana plants on July 7, plus rooms full of lamps and cultivation equipment and 100 pounds of dried marijuana stuffed into garbage bags. Police estimated the street value of the marijuana at $500,000.

- A rented home on Olive Avenue in Novato, where police said they found 30 pot plants, several pounds of processed marijuana on July 24, plus an elaborate cultivation facility with enough lighting, fans and other equipment to grow 1,000 plants. Police arrested the renter, who also leased the home at 1208 Chase St., which is around the corner.


Five suspects accused of running a marijuana farm in Novato -- Tru Quol Bui, Dung Phi Le, Tam Thanh Le, Truong Nhat Le and Francis Ngoe Tran -- appear in Marin Superior Court to enter their pleas on Aug. 9. Their lawyers consult their calendars in order to agree on upcoming court dates. (IJ photo/Frankie Frost)

- A $900,000 home on Indian Hills Drive in Novato, where police said the entire four-bedroom house was converted into a sophisticated marijuana farm that could accommodate up to 1,000 plants. Police seized 225 marijuana plants from several rooms on July 10 and arrested five suspects, all Orange County residents who were secretly working at the house.

- A rented home on Courtright Road in the southern San Rafael hills, where police seized 600 marijuana plants valued at $800,000 on July 18. The father and son who worked at the home were arrested.

After busting the Courtright Road home, police then linked it through ownership records to the co-owner of a home on Wimbledon Court in Novato that contained the remnants of an indoor marijuana farm.

"It looked like he had come in and destroyed all the growing stuff," said San Rafael police Sgt. Dan Fink. "It was obviously a grow house. We wish we had gotten there in time."

Investigators say sophisticated indoor marijuana operations, often connected to criminal syndicates, have been surfacing recently in the Sacramento area, the Central Valley and Southern California. But the marijuana operations in Marin have not yet been linked to any large criminal organizations, and federal authorities have not jumped into the Marin investigations.

"We haven't been contacted to adopt the case federally, but it doesn't mean that it won't eventually happen," said Special Agent Casey McEnry, based at the federal Drug Enforcement Administration office in San Francisco. "If anything came down and they need assistance, I'm sure we'd be more than happy to work with them."

News articles about Marin's indoor marijuana farms have led numerous residents to call in even more tips, said Detective Jesse Klinge of the Marin County Major Crimes Task Force. Such tips led investigators recently to search two more growing operations in Novato, but the proprietors claimed amnesty under medical marijuana laws - even though the homes had 50 to 150 plants inside.

Legitimate marijuana patients are allowed eight ounces of processed weed, six mature plants or 12 immature plants, Klinge said. The cases were sent to the district attorney's office for review.

"Some people we have been contacting are way, way beyond their limit, and they're taking advantage of their situation," Klinge said. "It's really a shame. Some of these people really need it, and on the other hand you have people abusing the system because there's so much money to be made off it."

John George, special agent in charge at the state Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement office in San Francisco, agreed, saying the state's medical marijuana law is "being abused extensively."

"Because of the medical marijuana laws, there's some confusion within the law enforcement community," he said. "There's political pressure on law enforcement in support of the medical marijuana laws. Some agencies have made medical marijuana enforcement the lowest of priorities."

Lynnette Shaw, director of the Marin Alliance for Medical Marijuana, the pot club in Fairfax, said that while a few individual growers have been "opportunistic" and "greedy," there is no widespread abuse of the law. If anything, Shaw said, society's tolerance of residential marijuana farming has reduced crime by making pot more accessible.

"Marijuana has become less valuable in the streets because patients are growing their own," she said. "We've reduced crime, we've reduced harm and we've reduced prices."

But Gordon Taylor, who runs the DEA office in Sacramento, said indoor marijuana farming has become a widely destructive force. Taylor has been spearheading an investigation that recently shut down 50 in-home pot nurseries in Sacramento, Elk Grove, Stockton, Tracy and Modesto and Lathrop.

The operation was large enough to produce 12 tons of marijuana a year - which, if sold for $4,000 a pound, would generate annual revenue of nearly $100 million. Investigators have arrested 16 suspects, all of whom are suspected members of an Asian gang in San Francisco that was spreading its operation to the Sacramento area, Taylor said.

"Nobody was living in any of these homes. Virtually every square inch was being used for the cultivation of marijuana," he said. "These people completely retrofit. They gut the insides of these homes. Most of the homes were purchased with 100 percent financing. So, in essence, these grows adversely affected the real estate market, the mortgage industry, the insurance industry.

"Not to mention the stigma these places create in a neighborhood. And these homes, we were finding them in relatively nice neighborhoods."

George, the state narcotics agent, said he has noted a rise in crime when marijuana farms come into a neighborhood.

"I've seen an increase in home-invasion robberies, kidnapping and other violent crimes when people know there's marijuana being grown inside a house," he said. "People go in there and steal it."

The initial investment in a pot nursery, not including the real estate itself, can be up to $75,000, Taylor said. Typical growing equipment includes irrigation tubing, lamps, fans, soil, electrical circuits, timers, Mylar foil and wall coverings to reflect or conceal light, and air ducts and charcoal filters to redirect the vapors through the attic.

Saland, the owner of 1208 Chase St., said he spent five days with a work crew cleaning out the cultivation equipment and gutting the house, which he remodeled eight years ago at a cost of $100,000.

"It's down to rafters, it's down to studs," he said. "Every floor has to be redone. Every appliance has to be torn out. It's as extensive as could be."

"My friends have teased me, 'How could you not know what was going on?'" he added. "The lawn was mowed, there was never a car there so I never stopped to say hello, and the rent came in on time."

Read more Novato stories at the IJ's Novato page.

Contact Gary Klien via e-mail at gklien@marinij.com

http://www.marinij.com/ci_6604626?source=most_viewed



DaBronx