High-tech ‘pot factories’ popping up in suburban homes

Saturday, September 23, 2006
(09-23) 10:12 PDT Elk Grove, Calif. (AP) —

Leon Nunn stepped out his front door one recent afternoon only to be waved back by a squadron of drug agents using a battering ram on a neighbor’s home.

The half-million dollar home in the quiet subdivision was stuffed with high-grade marijuana, plants covering nearly every square foot.

The bust is one example of a phenomenon that has come to light recently in subdivisions around the state’s capital.

Marijuana growers with suspected ties to Asian organized crime have been buying suburban homes — many in newer developments — because of the anonymity the drug dealers believe the neighborhoods afford.

They close the blinds and get to work gutting the inside, converting otherwise nondescript tract homes into the latest battleground in the state’s campaign against marijuana cartels.
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Police from Sacramento to Stockton are bashing in doors at more homes virtually every day as they develop new leads or are tipped by suddenly wary neighbors. More than three dozen homes have been found to be hiding marijuana groves in just the past seven weeks, most in Sacramento, Elk Grove and Stockton.

Like the others, the home on Elk Grove’s Mainline Drive had been converted to what law enforcement officials call a hothouse, with 1,000-watt lights for growing and irrigation networks feeding high-tech hydroponic growing systems.

Walls and ceilings were smashed to allow for complex ventilation and air filtration systems that vented the telltale odor through the attic. A web of extension cords and makeshift electric panels illegally tapped into the outside grid to avoid detection and save thousands of dollars in power bills.

Hundreds of thousands of dollars were spent to convert each of the homes to grow millions of dollars worth of marijuana. Most of the targeted homes were purchased for between $400,000 and $600,000.
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The phenomenon began in British Columbia, Canada, where Vietnamese organized crime outfits gutted houses to grow potent “B.C. Bud” that can sell for $5,000 or more a pound in the United States, said Corporal Pierre Lemaitre of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

Growers headed south to avoid increased border protections after the 2001 terrorist attacks.

“It’s definitely a concerted effort by Asian organized crime groups in Canada to move part of their operation down to the United States,” said Rodney Benson, the DEA’s special agent in charge of Washington, Oregon, Alaska and Idaho.