The Maine State Police (MSP) were part of a massive enforcement action Wednesday against Yezi Craft Cannabis, a.k.a. Yezi USA, LLC, on Norridgewock Road in Fairfield, a Chinese-controlled cannabis company with a checkered history and multiple disciplinary actions.
Although the details of Wednesday’s enforcement actions at 201 Norridgewock Road are still filtering in, the locations history and ties to Chinese organized crime are apparent from public records from the Office of Cannabis Policy (OCP).
Yezi Craft Cannabis and its related companies are a prime example of how Maine’s labyrinthine cannabis rules are no match for sophisticated criminal groups from out of state.
Enforcement records released by Maine’s Office of Cannabis Policy (OCP) shed light on how Chinese operators routinely exploit and subvert weaknesses in Maine’s legal cannabis programs to continue profiting from their illegal schemes, even after an attempted crackdown by regulators.
In previous reports, the Maine Wire has documented how Johnny Wu and Jason Tsai attempted to operate licensed marijuana businesses before veering into purely black market endeavors. Wu and Tsai are no longer operating in Maine’s cannabis sector — at least no the legal side — but Shunwang Ding and Shengcheng Ye, both associates of the Green Future LLC crew, appear to have kept their storefront in business despite enforcement actions from OCP.
The Yezi location was purchased in Sept. 2021 and quickly converted into a combination marijuana grow and store front.
Almost immediately the operators clashed with OCP.
Yet every time licenses tied to Yezi were sanctioned or suspended, the owners would find a new name and a face to use a license at the location.
According to OCP disciplinary records, Yezi was not just operating above the limits or disregarding safety protocols; they were part of the vast prohibited collective that included locations throughout Lewiston, Auburn, and Turner controlled by Green Future LLC, a.k.a. the Green Future Gang.
In a March 2022 letter revoking the license held by Shunwang Ding, OCP records show that the Turner location (57 Conant Road) was visited four times by OCP staff as part of an investigation into whether it was part of a prohibited collective.
“The company Green Future, LLC, which is neither a registered caregiver nor registered dispensary, was running the property at 57 Conant Road as a dispensary, including treating the registered caregivers like employees by paying them a salary (such as your salary which was $2,500 a month for “trimming”), controlling the registered caregiver assistants by paying them a salary directly, cultivating immature plants for all caregivers together, without delineating ownership, and controlling the transfers and sale of the registered caregivers’ harvested marijuana,” the Ding letter states.
Ding had been a licensed cannabis grower since Oct. 2021, one month after Yezi USA Inc. completed the purchase of 201 Norridgewock Road.
“Your harvested marijuana was collected by people who were not your registered employees and pooled with harvested marijuana from other caregivers at this location and sold by other persons, beyond your control or keeping any records of the sale,” OCP said in the letter to Ding.
In a subsequent May 2022 letter to Sheng Cheng Ye, the listed owner of Yezi Craft Cannabis, OCP revealed that Ye remained domiciled in New York the entire time he operated the business.
As with Ding, OCP found Ye’s blatantly illegal activity revolved, in part, around the Conant Road location.
Ye was found violating several rules concerning the cultivation and sale of cannabis at the Fairfield location, along with multiple associates, including Yun Jian Huang, Xiao Dong Zhang, Bowen Bai, Dustin Veinott, and Ali Lee.
The letter alleges that Ye “was involved in the removal” — it doesn’t say purchase or theft, but removal — “of 1,100 pounds of cannabis flower from 57 Conant Road,” product he brought to Fairfield without an records.
At the time, Ye’s license had expired.
In addition, OCP found that Yezi was selling edibles without a food license, tobacco products without a tobacco license, and mislabeled food and cannabis products.
OCP also found Ye purchased large amounts of cannabis from wholesale vendors without abiding by Maine law and enlisted various individuals who illegally assisted with his business endeavors.
“[The OCP Investigator] found that of the five (5) wholesale transactions that you provided, three (3) involved Iron Lung of Portland, Maine. [The OCP Investigator] found that you had allowed a Bowen Bai take receipt of all three of these deliveries. [The OCP Investigator] found that Mr. Bai was not registered with the Department as either a caregiver or caregiver assistant. When [The OCP Investigator] requested a copy of Mr. Bai’s photo ID, you advised through Ms. Ali Lee that he had not worked for your company for a long time and that you were unable to contact him,” the OCP letter states.
According to OCP, three of the wholesale purchases involving Iron Lung occurred when Ye did not have a valid license.
Throughout Ye’s entire time of operation, both legally and illegally, he most likely remained a full-time resident of New York, OCP said, implying that he fraudulently provided a Maine address when applying for his license. Ye also managed to obtain a Maine drivers license, according to the records, despite never becoming a resident of Maine.
At the time Ye first applied for a license in 2020, OCP applicants were required to be residents of Maine, which Ye attested that he was. (That residency requirement was later stripped as the result of a judicial ruling, opening the door for several dozen Chinese individuals from out-of-state to obtain medicinal registrations as cover for their cannabis operations.)
That assessment relied on an OCP investigators learning, among other things, that Ye was frequently in New York and had two children enrolled there in private school.
“Your Maine driver’s license was issued a few weeks after your New York driver’s license,” the OCP added in the letter to Ye.
Ye being stripped of his license failed to stop the illegal activity from occurring at 201 Norridgewock in Fairfield, as is evident by an Oct. 2023 letter addressed to Tjanqi Hou at the very same address.
Hou, after also being stripped of his license, appealed the decision. But when it came time for his hearing, he asked for a delay. When it came time for his rescheduled hearing, he requested another delay. At the third attempted hearing, he did not appear, and OCP staff subsequently learned through “informal channels” that he had left the state.
Throughout the entire time covered by the OCP letters, the Norridgewock Road property remained under the ownership of Yezi USA, LLC and its sole director, Ye.
Although the store shuttered from time to time, it has remained consistently open from five years, almost never attracting the kind of law enforcement scrutiny it saw today.
This story will be updated when we obtain new information about the Maine State Police raid today…
