If you’re looking to grow thousands of pounds of black market marijuana out of rural houses in Maine, you’re going to need a licensed Master Electrician to get your commercial-grade electricity approved.
That’s exactly what Tong Q. Lu, the owner of China Wok on Broadway in Bangor, found in J. Martin Vachon.
Vachon, an 87-year-old master electrician, previously told the Maine Wire that he’s been living at a property Lu owns, lending his expertise to unlicensed Chinese cannabis growers in exchange for room and board.
[The Triad’s Electrician: Meet the 87-Year-Old “Frontman” for Chinese Marijuana Grows in Maine…]
The Maine Wire can now confirm that Vachon has a single co-worker on the electrical projects that have been approved under his license: Lu.
“Tong’s father died during COVID and he adopted me as his father figure,” Vachon told the Maine Wire last week.
A side benefit of that father-son relationship is that Lu has Vachon’s Master Electrician’s license at his disposal, which is required to get Central Maine Power and Versant Power to connect commercial-grade 400-amp electricity to any property.
Together, Lu and Vachon have been prolific. According to state records, Vachon’s license has been used at over 35 properties since 2021 — but those official records may only hint at the true extent of their work.
Some of the locations where Vachon’s license has been used have been the subject of search warrants executed by county sheriffs, in coordination with the federal Drug Enforcement Agency and the Department of Homeland Security.
In January, the Lincoln County Sheriff’s Office executed search warrants at 34 Clover Lane in Whitefield at a property owned by Hongxia Kuang of Brooklyn, New York. While executing the warrant, officers observed Xiangming Yi, 61, fleeing the scene, though he was later arrested after returning to the address. According to the electrical records, Yanfen Cen was Vachon’s point of contact for the work.
At 107 Perkins Street in Norridgewock, a property owned by Patrick Yam of East Elmhurst, N.Y., was one of three in the area raided by the Somerset County Sheriff in March.
Those warrants led to the arrest of 29-year-old Jiamin Liao. Liao, variously described as living in California and New York, owned two other properties in the area, purchased in cash, which were also functioning as illegal marijuana grows, according to the sheriff’s office.
Earlier this week, the Waldo County Sheriff’s Office executed at 555 Belfast Road in Freedom, another site where Vachon’s license has been used. The warrant resulted in the seizure of 1,900 marijuana plants, but no arrests.
The property was purchased in Dec. 2021 by Austin Zhen, 33, of Brooklyn, New York.
Zhen used a mortgage from Quontic Bank, a New York-based Community Development Finance Institution (CDFI).
Vachon helped Zhen connect 400-amp service in December.
The Electrician’s Helper
Although Lu declined a phone interview, multiple sources, including Vachon, have told the Maine Wire that Lu, a licensed “electricians helper,” is Vachon’s only assistant.
According to state records, Lu obtained his “electricians helper” license in Aug. 2020, but he did not connect with Vachon until late 2021.
Vachon, as well as municipal employees who have dealt with him, described the arrangement similarly: Lu does the work; Vachon signs the permits.
“I’m a little to weak, physically, so the work has to be done by someone else,” Vachon said. “[Lu] is the muscle I lack.”
Vachon also works the phones, trying to convince local towns and their code enforcement officers that the unlicensed Chinese-owned marijuana grows are a “cottage industry” staffed by hard-working, family-friendly folks just trying to live the American dream.
Vachon rarely sees the inside of properties that he works on, but he doesn’t judge the marijuana cultivators for their activities.
“If the Chinese want to stick the wires in the ears to make their eyes round or something, you know, I try to discourage the process,” he said.
Last year, Lu acquired another property in the remote Penobscot County village of Mattawamkeag at 41 Graham Lane.
The location was a unique find, having previously served as the location of the Dr. Carl E. Trout K-5 Elementary School.
Originally constructed in 1939 using Public Works Administration funding, residents voted in 2009 to shutter the school.
According to real estate tax records, Lu paid the town $150,000 for the property and one acre of land, which isn’t a terrible price considering the extent of the asbestos he’d later find. (That asbestos, Vachon said, has been taken care of by some of Lu’s associates, who wore moist bandanas over their faces as a precaution.)
The little league baseball field where kids used to play for recess sits unused, and farm animals scurry about a slapdash pen erected in the backyard.
It’s also where Lu is boarding Vachon.
“Right now, I’m living in a school that the Chinese bought and tried to turn into a marijuana grow. And I’m left here with my dogs. Just kinda watching the place until something happens with the building,” said Vachon.
The location would have made for an excellent cannabis grow, as it came with three-phase power, as opposed to the smaller one-phase.
In recent months, the growers have fled, leaving Vachon to tend to the 20,000 square foot school, as well as three goats, two dogs, and a flock of chickens and ducks.
“I had Chinese people around me but they got scared and left with the marijuana grow,” said Vachon.
“I never knew their names,” he said.
Earlier this year, in an attempt to assess the validity of claims made by Vachon, the Maine Wire visited China Wok. Lu was there, and Vachon was in the cab of a broke down pick-up truck — one of the wheels was up on cinderblocks.
During that visit, an ebullient Lu insisted that Vachon was “like family.”
Vachon, for his part, spoke glowingly of his Chinese associates.
“They all speak Chinese,” he said. “They’ll put a bowl of rice in front of me.”
“My Chinese people, I consider them the kind of people who stand in front of the tank in Tiananmen Square in China,” he said.
Lu, according to Vachon, immigrated to the United States when he was in his 20s.
Since that time, public records show Lu has lived or registered businesses all over the U.S., including in California, New York, Arizona, Massachusetts, Maryland, and New Hampshire.
More recently, Lu has settled down in Maine to try his hand in the restaurant business. Lu also owns several other properties in Maine, including apartment buildings in Brewer and Bangor.
In May 2021, Lu sold Mings Garden in Bucksport to Qi Qi Chen before purchasing the locally famous China Light restaurant on Broadway in Bangor using an LLC, Qi Lu, Inc.
The Chinese food restaurant, a favorite of college kids in the area, had previously been owned by Ping Yuen “Sam” Lam for four decades. According to real estate records, he’d purchased the property in 1981 along with Kai Huen Lai, of Rye, N.H., and Yuen Kwong Wong, of Cambridge, Mass.
Lam sold it for $250,000, on paper, in 2021 — far less than the original asking price of $550,000.
In September of that year, Lu reopened the restaurant under the new name, China Wok. (Judging by the Google reviews, the food is hit or miss these days.)
But Lu splits his time between the restaurant and his other vocation, according to Vachon.
“This is all, you know, related to the Chinese,” he said. “It’s certainly keeping me busy. I’ve never done so much in my life.”
For Lu, the skills of a master electrician – and, perhaps more importantly, the ability to use his license to sign off on commercial-grade electrical installations – are immensely valuable.
According to court records related to illegal marijuana sites raided within the last year, the locations often consume more than 40,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity in a month — more than four times what the average American home consumes in an entire year.
Vachon, by his estimation, has been a big benefit to the illicit marijuana growers, who struggled to safely manage their heroic electricity consumption before he came along.
“The Chinese burned a lot of stuff on their end, along with the power company stuff,” Vachon said, referring to transformers, electrical wires, and even houses.
Although Vachon said that Lu would never do work without him around and then submit paperwork to the state or power companies without Vachon present, he also didn’t recall having done work at properties where state records show his electrical license was used.
Vachon also said he’ll occasionally get calls from town employees or the power companies in relation to properties where he doesn’t recall having worked.
At 652 Woodville Road in Woodville, for example, state records show that 400-amp commercial grade power was installed in August under Vachon’s license.
However, Vachon didn’t recall having ever worked on the facility.
That property, the site of a former lumber yard, is well-known to the locals as an unlicensed marijuana cultivation facility staffed by Cantonese-speaking individuals.
Last year, the Animal Control Officer for the area seized a border collie from the property’s occupants after residents in the town reported witnessing a man beating it with a stick in the front yard. A local family subsequently adopted the dog.
At the town office next door, the odor of marijuana is often unavoidable, and neighbors have complained about the stench.
According to the electrical permit records, the point person for the inspection was Zhou Jing Hui.
The property was purchased in May 2023 by Ling Xing Chen, who at the time gave her address as an apartment building in Elmhurst, N.Y.
The town of Woodville hasn’t approved any marijuana businesses.
Several more marijuana grows, also serviced under Vachon’s license, dot the towns within a short drive from the Woodville site.
At 249 Winn Road in Lee, for example, Vachon recalled installing electrical upgrades at a building that formerly served as the Christian Missionary Alliance Church of Lee.
Although the site is not currently occupied or growing marijuana, Vachon listed it as a cultivation facility when he submitted paperwork to the state in November.
When the Maine Wire visited the property last month, there was a “For Sale” sign in the front yard belonging to Xiaorong “Sharon” Horton of Dover-Foxcroft.
Vachon and Lu’s handiwork can be found all over rural Maine.
On the Dore Hill Road in Athens, Vachon installed 400-amp service and remote panels for a facility he described in state records as a cannabis cultivation site.
That property, which has not been approved by the town as a marijuana cultivation facility, was purchased in Dec. 2022 by Jianmei Chen, of Brooklyn, N.Y.
Chen, like many of the owners of illicit cannabis grows in Maine, used a mortgage from Quontic Bank to finance the acquisition.
When the Maine Wire visited the property in January, large pallets of marijuana growing supplies were stacked throughout the front yard.
Vachon is also the electrician who installed 400-amp service for a marijuana grow in Starks that was purchased by Yongwen Chen in 2021 using a mortgage from Quontic Bank.
Other public records suggest that Lu’s side hustle is a family affair.
On the Millet Mallet Road in Lincoln, locals suspect there is an illegal cannabis operation. The property is lined with shipping containers, propane tanks, and security cameras.
Lincoln residents familiar with the property said it has caused blown transformers on a number of occasions, including as recently as Monday.
According to the Penobscot Registry of Deeds, the property at 168 Millet Mallet Road was sold from Junrong Mai to Mei Yun Li in June 2022.
Mei Yun Li also happens to be the name provided to city of Bangor as the owner of China Wok for victualer’s license inspections in 2022 and 2023.
Although Vachon and Lu have been busy as partners, things aren’t going well for the black market cannabis trafficking economy these days.
According to Vachon, they’ve recently started taking heavy losses on their investments.
Making matters worse, some of their cash stashes are getting robbed.
“The Chinese don’t trust banks,” he said. “And they keep a lot of their money around in cash. So they are vulnerable.”
Vachon said he was aware of a restaurant owner in Brewer — not Lu — whose home was “dismantled” as part of a burglary.
The work has also come with risks for Vachon.
During their commercial power installation at One Henderson Court in Fairfield, for example, Vachon clashed with the operators of that illicit marijuana grow.
“There was a threat put out, by the Chinese, put out in Chinese, that they’re gonna hire someone to kill us, Tong and I, because we’d made such a mess of their electric,” Vachon said.
Despite the risks and long workdays, the marijuana farmers Vachon has lived with for the past three years manage to stay in close contact with their families.
“They just talk endlessly to their people on the phone, back in China,” Vachon said.
Click to read more of the Maine Wire’s Triad Weed investigative series
