When the Machias Police executed a search warrant at 414 East Kennebec Road in December, they suspected they find an illegal marijuana cultivation site operated by out-of-state criminals.
But the scale — and sophistication — of the operation they uncovered left them gobsmacked.
“We found three Asian males in the barn that were actively tending the grow. Three buildings and the main house… all contained pretty substantial grows inside,” said Machias Police Chief Keith Mercier.
[RELATED: How Chinese Marijuana Grows Took Over Rural Maine…]
The Machias police confiscated 2,607 live marijuana plants that were being grown across nine different rooms on the property, including in two large barns.
“We did ID all three. Two had Malaysian passports and the third had a New York Driver’s License,” said Mercier, adding that the third man also had a passport from the People’s Republic of China.
The property — once a beautiful salt water farm with views of the East Branch of Little Kennebec Bay — sits on 37.9 acres and is valued, according to RedFin, at nearly $600,000. It has been abandoned by its current owners following the arrests of Ming Li, 52, Dong Yang Li, 60, and Peng You Phang, 61.
Cops also found the wallet of an Asian woman not present at the time of the arrest, along with a plane ticket showing a recent arrival from Beijing.
[RELATED: Maine Law Enforcement Raids Machias Marijuana Grow, Arrests Three Suspected Non-Citizens…]
Li, Li, and Phang were all charged with felonies related to illegally growing a trafficking marijuana.
When an inspector from Versant Power, the electrical utility serving Machias, got a look at the house’s circuit breaker box, he was surprised to see that the grow operators had installed gerryrigged wires that allowed them to circumvent the power meter.
In other words, illegal pot growers were stealing electricity.
[RELATED: One NYC Bank Financed More Than 50 Illicit Chinese Marijuana Grow Houses in Rural Maine…]
The Machias PD said Versant’s best guess as to how much power they might have stolen was “tens of thousands of dollars.”
Electricians the Maine Wire spoke with said the circumvention technique would have required an electrician or electrical engineer with a high level of expertise.
Discarded growing substrates ring the property and adjacent forest like layers of the fossil record — evidence of at least two years of steady, large-scale marijuana cultivation.
The men are unlikely to ever receive any punishment for flouting Maine’s cannabis laws.
According to the Machias PD, two of the men had their bail set at $500. The third has his bail set at $1,000, but only because he had a prior charge for trafficking heroin in New Jersey, a charge for which he served federal prison time, according to the Machias PD.
Just days after the bust, a woman from New York arrived, paid the bail in cash, and the men were free. Although they have a court date this month, the cops aren’t expecting them to return to Washington County to face a judge.
In 2021, a Mass.-based company, HBA Properties, purchased the property where the illegal marijuana grow was operating.
The officers of that company are listed as Fanny Sun, Qiao Yi Wu, Sinh Phat Voong, and Zhan Su.
Building a marijuana grow of that size and sophistication required no small investment of capital.
The heat pumps festooning the property are worth nearly $20,000, while the lights, water pumps, power tools, and other accessories are likely worth more.
But all of it has been abandoned at the property, along with an Acura MDX registered to Kenny Chen, who listed the property as his address on the vehicle registration.
Chen has not been located.
Attempts to contacting the officers of HBA Properties were unsuccessful.
“You can look at the environmental issues, the impact on the grid from the electrical usage, the impact on legal business owners,” said Mercier.
“These folks weren’t permitted, they weren’t licensed, and they were running a very substandard operation compared to what the legal folks have to do,” he said.
The property in Machias is one of a handful of illegal marijuana sites that have been raided by law enforcement in recent weeks.
Last month, cops in China, Maine busted a similar operation at a residential home following a tip that someone was being held at the property against their will.
[RELATED: Illegal Marijuana Grow in China, Maine Busted, 970 Plants Seized, Three Arrested…]
A few days later, Maine State Police executed search warrants on two properties in Belgrade, seizing roughly 2,300 live plants.
All of the properties are among the more than 270 sites that the Department of Homeland Security says are controlled by Asian Transnational Criminal Organizations.
Thanks to the Maine Wire, law enforcement is finally starting to move against these Chinese Communist criminal enterprises. Well done!
Isnt diversity wonderful?
I am Chinese-American and I find it interesting that right wingers go after Asians who are doing what many local maine people are doing. Is this racism?
Amazing that remote sensing technology was developed over the past 60 years to find hidden illegal marijuana grow facilities –and yet, law enforcement is surprised to find one today.
Nice catch — now sweep the rest asap.
Amazing that remote sensing technology was developed over the past 60 years to find hidden illegal marijuana grow facilities –and yet, law enforcement is surprised to find one today.
Nice catch — now sweep the rest asap.
Meant to say — good point Spolado
Connor — No it’s not racism — It is about foreign nationals operating CCP sponsored illegal grow houses.
No reflection on you so calm down.
Whoever wired around that meter knew exactly what he was doing or he would have been laying their dead.
I don’t give a hoot what anyone’s ethnic background is, a criminal act needs to be punished.
I just listened to GHRT to Steve giving his latest report… including the East Millinocket site..
And how the local policeman claimed to not know anything about it, when clearly everyone else seems to… And how the state seemingly isn’t interested in pursuing these people, due to possibly, some top-down edict…
I’m sitting in my car wondering what the HELL is going on here??
Why the HELL doesn’t the state care??
This is madness
If the current administration/LE agencies won’t take action against these monstrously illegal operations, then I suggest, in the interest of Maine’s safety, economy & environment, that it be done by other means…………
Isn’t this grow activity illegal under federal law as well? Where are the FBI? Oh, that’s right, too busy fabricating evidence against Donald Trump , ignoring credible reports that could have stopped mass shootings, and chasing down “dangerous fugitives” who dared walk into the US Capitol building on January 6.
Is it all being sat on by the Biden group. How can all the police be so dumb. Do not the police drive around these back roads? Do not the local building inspectors get to check the local buildings? We have to depend on the “locals” for tips.China is killing us. Why just 500 $ bail you know they are back in chine by now.
That hardware item used to tap into the service to steal electricity has been around for decades since back when Cannabis was very illegal and grow ops ruthlessly hunted by police. I didn’t know people still used them.
Chinese might not engage in violent crime like blacks do but they certainly engage in massive white collar crime. Tax evasion, illegal grows, industrial espionage, counterfeiting, etc…
Trump 2024!
Same thing is happening here in WA and British Columbia. The weed market here is dominated by the chinese and all that money is flowing right back into China.
Thank god our borders are wide open
Where’s the follow-up on the officers of HBA Properties. I wonder what other properties they are invested in. Under their individual names and as an investment company. If I were the state police, I would be checking to see what other names have the address of the farm on their licenses. I would be looking into associations with politicians and judges. This could turn into a much bigger story for the right journalists up there in Maine.
So, they are visitors, committing various crimes, and they aren’t deported?
They stole tens of thousands in power and got away with it, losing only $2,000 in bail money. Very lenient, those Mainers.
there was also a bust on carmel maine with chinese men growing pot. i bet there is more.
Ay you all stoopid an have huge smelly american poop chutes, we have forty other places that you don’t know about and that one we burn down collect insurance and buy another place you doan know about
all Maine men are gay
Brought to yoo by the same filth that gave us Covid. They care about nothing but money. Evil incarnate.
You’d think that the power companies would notice the unexpected load on their lines and transformers and put a second meter up on the pole. Just assign it a fictitious customer number and as all meters are now read electronically, it won’t matter that it’s up on the pole.
And when the two numbers don’t match up, then the power company has them dead to rights…
This isn’t a city, it’s rural runs where there are, at most, a half dozen people on a transformer. An induction ampmeter, just clip onto the outside of an insulated wire, would give you a pretty good idea of the amount of electricity going through it, and that’d be the wire to put a second meter on. This isn’t complicated — and spend a few hundred dollars to save thousands???
All I know is vote Trump and everything will be better.
Trump 2024
MAGA,
Cheers,
Connor
Seems like an intelligence goldmine.