“Jason” spoke broken English.
But the energetic Chinese man communicated well enough to tell an HVAC tech from Lewiston-Auburn about working for the Chinese Communist Party as an organ harvester.
Jung Yen Tsai, or Jason, was a middle-aged man from the Flushing area of New York with a noticeable scar over one eye. He told Maine locals that he emigrated from China in the 1990s or early 2000s. Prior to arriving in the U.S., his specialty was kidneys, the HVAC tech recalled Jason saying.
But by late 2019, he’d found his way into Maine, begun forming a web of interconnected shell companies with his partners, and had set about building a cannabis operation that so rarely adhered to Maine’s emerging legal marijuana laws it can safely be called black market.
Tsai, along with Yen Hsein “Johnny” Wu and Ganggang “George” Zheng, participated in the Gold Rush days of Maine’s cannabis legalization program, straddling the line between legal and wildly illegal practices. Like Wu, whose exploits in Maine were documented in a previous Maine Wire report, Tsai attempted to obtain licenses and permits to operate legally, but it quickly became apparent to regulators with Maine’s Office of Cannabis Policy (OCP) that he had no interest in coloring within the lines if it meant reduced profits.
The Tsai-Wu-Zheng operation ran much of their activity out of an old machinists’ hangar at 57 Conant Road in Turner, adjacent to the now-closed Twitchell-Turner-Auburn Airport. According to Maine State Police documents obtained by the Maine Wire, that property was suspected to be under the control of a “Chinese gang from [New York City]” as early as March 2021. In the following years, the state police and the Androscoggin Sheriff’s Department would respond multiple times to that location for reports of armed robberies, hostage situations, and various civil disputes. Invariably, they’d find themselves enmeshed in arguments between Cantonese speaking individuals over who was in charge of the massive cannabis facility.
More recently, that location was tied to the homicide arrest of Andrew Krott, 26, of Austinville, Va., charged with the murder of William N. Robinson, 34, also of Austinville. Sources have confirmed to the Maine Wire that Krott is suspected of having shot Robinson at 57 Conant Road prior to depositing his body in a forest in Edgecomb as part of some drug-related criminal scheme. The Maine State Police haven’t said what Krott or Robinson’s ties may be to the Chinese gang from New York, which still controls the facility. However, Krott was arrested after almost 20 days on the lam hiding at a marina in San Diego.
Tsai was one of the directors of Green Future LLC, the first shell company the organization used to purchase the building. According to OCP documents, he attempted to grow cannabis legally in his own name, at first, but by Dec. 20, 2021, OCP had revoked his license to operate in Maine. He nonetheless remained involved for an undetermined period of time as a director of Green Future LLC and a panoply of shell corporations that held property where the Tsai-Wu-Zheng Operation was growing cannabis.
The web of licensed and unlicensed marijuana growing sites appear to have operated as a collective business endeavor, a practice that is prohibited under OCP rules. According to a source familiar with the operation, Tsai was “kicked out of the family” — whatever that means — long before illegal Chinese marijuana in Maine began to garner national attention. Tsai’s ostracizing from Chinese black-market marijuana game may have had something to do with a violent dispute with Wu, perhaps the same civil dispute that the state police were frequently called to the Turner facility to referee.
The HVAC tech, who talked with the Maine Wire on condition of anonymity, got the distinct impression that Jason was trying to befriend him, even as he leaned on his expertise for help with marijuana cultivation. Their conversations frequently strayed from the proper way to construct highly efficient indoor cannabis-growing facilities, which is what Tsai was paying him to do at various facilities in Turner, Auburn, and Lewiston.
On one occasion, the typically buoyant Tsai showed up to a meeting morose, his collared shirt bloody. The man had only two things on his mind: a grudge against a man named “Johnny” and how he might get his hands on a gun.
On another occasion, the HVAC tech had the opportunity to get an insider’s perspective on the bustling Chinese trade for human organs.
“How does that work?” the HVAC tech recalled asking. “Where do the organs come from?”
Jason pointed an index finger at his temple with his thumb cocked back, pantomiming a gun, and blasted the imaginary shot.
The HVAC tech didn’t press any further, and he never found any reason to doubt the Chinese immigrant’s claims.
Despite his former occupation harvesting organs for the wealthiest individuals of communist China, Jason always claimed that he hated communism and the CCP, giving the impression that he was an entrepreneurial striver chasing the American dream.
Reached by phone, Tsai, though he spoke little English, declined an interview with the Maine Wire.
Green Future, Blue Future, & Jung Yen “Jason” Tsai
Maine Office of Cannabis Policy shows Tsai is one of the few Chinese growers from out-of-state who have had their licenses to participate in Maine’s medicinal marijuana program stripped. Although some of the individuals have address histories in Massachusetts, law enforcement records and property records point toward NYC—in particular, Flushing—as the HQ for the transnational criminal organizations.
The records the Maine Wire has accumulated shed light on how the Tsai-Wu-Zheng Operation functioned, what role the various properties controlled by Green Future LLC played in the drug trafficking network, and how Maine’s cannabis regulators have struggled to rein in illicit operators.
Taken together, the records offer an unprecedented look at how the federal government, Maine’s elected officials, law enforcement, and cannabis regulators have tried — and failed spectacularly — to reckon with the financially lucrative business of Chinese organized crime in Maine. Indeed, Maine’s regulators have not only failed to stem that illicit grows. They’ve in fact facilitated the activities of criminal organizations by knowingly providing individuals associated with illicit activities with lucrative medicinal marijuana licenses, as OCP Director John Hudak admitted earlier this month.
But before the current wave of out-of-state Chinese growers began working with OCP to establish a veneer of legal compliance, Jason Tsai led the way. Using a complex web of shell corporations and real estate holding companies, Tsai acquired buildings in and around the Lewiston-Auburn area beginning in 2019, including the hangar at 57 Conant Road in Turner near the airport. Airports, Tsai once told the HVAC technician, were important. He never conveyed precisely why the airports were important, the tech said, other than it had something to do with wealthy people in China needing to hide their money from the communist dictatorship.
According to Androscoggin County Property records, Maine Bureau of Corporations Records, and several sources familiar with Tsai’s enterprise, the man and his associates founded Green Future in Aug. 2019 and quickly began acquiring properties under the corporate name. A few months later, Tsai reformulated some of his real estate holdings under the banner of Blue Future Corporation. This time, Gang Gang “George” Zheng was listed as the president of the company, while Tsai was the treasurer. The men listed, respectively, 25 Peter Boulevard in Lewiston and 764 North River Road in Greene as their home addresses.
According to a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) list of addresses suspected of ties to Chinese criminal organizations obtained by the Maine Wire, multiple properties linked to Tsai and Green Future were flagged by federal law enforcement. That includes the 57 Conant Road property and 764 N. River Road in Greene, a modern home situated next to the Bates College rowing house on the Androscoggin River. According to a source familiar with that house, it was not for sale when Tsai fell in love with it, but the cash offer was persuasive for the owner.
Blue Future Corporation’s primary holding was the 15 Locust Street property, a massive brick mill building on the banks of the Androscoggin River. Blue Future acquired one-third of the old building, the rest of which, in true Maine fashion, is owned by Marden’s. Marden’s had declined acquiring that section of the mill building in part due to the extensive renovations it would have required, including toxic lead and asbestos abatement.
At Locust Street, crews of non-English speaking workers initially lugged in dozens of mattresses before getting busy with renovations. Witnesses observed laborers busily remediating asbestos with naught but wet bandanas over their faces. It’s unclear whether the prospective marijuana grow ever became active, but the property now appears abandoned. Liens for unpaid taxes have begun stacking up against Blue Future. However, a source familiar with the location did tell the Maine Wire that, from time to time, someone will sneak into the Marden’s side of the building and turn Blue Future’s water back on, suggesting the location still plays some role in the network’s operations, perhaps as a flop house for Chinese migrants.
Tsai’s ambitious real estate buying spree never lived up to its cannabis growing potential. According to OCP records, Tsai was stripped of his medicinal caregivers license in Dec. 2021 following a series of failed inspections and a pattern of deceptive behavior.
On February 4, 2021, the OCP investigated reports of unlicensed marijuana on Broad Street in Auburn. OCP determined that Tsai was cultivating medical marijuana at a location without a license for that location, and had an individual, Benguang Huang, tending to plants who was not his registered assistant, and grew with Huang as part of a collective in violation of both of their plant count limits. Tsai operated the unlicensed Broad Street grow at the same time he operated his licensed grow on Conant Road, the December 2021 letter states. For these violations, Tsai and Huang both saw their licenses revoked.
But just because his license was revoked, doesn’t mean Tsai was out of the industry. The Conant Road location, per OCP records, continued to be used for collective growing by a host of licensed and unlicensed cannabis entrepreneurs—practices expressly prohibited under Maine law.
[RELATED: Maine Man Charged in Marijuana Conspiracy Looks to Supreme Court for Vindication…]
Corporate filings related to the properties are consistent with OCP’s findings. For example, dozens of marijuana related LLCs were all registered to the Conant Road property or other properties under the control of the Tsai-Wu-Zheng Organization, often times on the same exact day by the same attorney.
That pattern of corporate filings — i.e. shared addresses, same-date filings, shared directors, etc. — has in the past been used as evidence of illegal collective growing, such as in the federal prosecution of Lucas Sirois, of Farmington.
However, no federal charges have ever been brought against Tsai, Wu, or anyone connected to their operation.
Asked for clarification on when OCP will refer a case to federal investigators, as they did with Sirois, an OCP spokesperson declined to comment.
For those outside of Maine’s marijuana industry, the violations of Wu, Tsai, their associates, and the illegal Chinese marijuana gangs may generally read like small potatoes—minor bureaucratic kerfuffles, especially considering marijuana’s legal status in Maine. But for law-abiding marijuana business owners in Maine, the details are infuriating, as almost every cannabis entrepreneur in Maine has dealt with OCP’s often overbearing and sometimes inconsistent enforcement of the rules and regulations.
Despite the extensive evidence of wrongdoing described in the OCP records, the punishments incurred by Tsai, Wu, and their associates have been limited entirely to the loss of a license that wasn’t being abided by in the first place.
The sprawling networks of Chinese drug trafficking hubs in Maine, of which 57 Conant Road and Green Future LLC are just a small part, came to light due to a leaked U.S. Department of Homeland Security (DHS) memo.
The DHS memo said there were 270 locations in Maine connected to Asian Transnational Criminal Organizations that were part of a multi-billion dollar black market marijuana trafficking industry. Although the memo referenced a list of addresses in Maine, that list has never been made public.
The Maine Wire has obtained a copy of that list.
Multiple properties related to Tsai and Wu are found on that list, an indication that federal law enforcement views the individuals as key players within the illegal Chinese marijuana rackets that have inundated Maine since 2019.
To be continued…
Read Parts I & II in the Green Future Series
Jung Yen “Jason” Tsai was an associate of Yen Hsein “Johnny” Wu and Ganggang “George” Zheng. In a previous story, the Maine Wire detailed how Wu served as a key player in the emerging Chinese cannabis racket in Maine — before and after losing his OCP license. Tsai was his partner in crime, so to speak, at least for a time.
Read Part I: Cannabis Office Docs, Police Records Highlight Maine’s Failure to Combat Chinese Criminal Gangs
Read Part II: The Shadowy Network of Johnny Wu and Green Future LLC
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