Federal complaint filed against Sacramento pot shop

[Midnight]

In light of this story, if I were a vendor to any California dispensary, I'd be very leery of selling to any dispensary. This is especially screwed up with the outdoor harvest being right around the corner.

And I would not want to be anyone that sold this place anything because now you are on the Feds radar for sure. I am sure that there will be some growers facing federal charges before this is all over.

http://www.news10.net/news/article/155009/2/Federal-complaint-filed-against-Sacramento-pot-shop

SACRAMENTO, CA - The owners of R and R Wellness have been named in a federal complaint, which charges Bryan Smith and his father Kelly Smith of conspiring to turn a profit, a violation of California law.

READ: Federal complaint filed against R and R Wellness

Within the criminal complaint, a federal drug agent states:

"The investigation reveals a network of marijuana cultivators, which all worked in knowing cooperation with others within the conspiracy to make as much money as possible via the sale of marijuana with the common link being Bryan Smith, the owner of R and R Wellness."

Back in June, R and R Wellness, in downtown Sacramento, was raided for growing pot plants and turning a profit.

Now, a federal complaint could supersede state charges against the dispensary and lead to stiffer penalties.

The complaint could also lead to a crackdown of California medicinal marijuana dispensaries.

News10/KXTV

 

[greenmatter]

IMHO dispensaries suck sweaty balls no matter what state they are in ...... i hope no growers get screwed because of this

 

[Midnight]

I would not want to be anyone that vended to them, if you did, you are in the feds cross hairs now. At the bottom of this post is a link to the affidavit that the feds used to get the search warrant, it has some pretty useful and interesting information in it. When they raided dudes house he had 17 plants growing there and they let him keep them because his wife had a card.

I would strongly encourage everyone to read the affidavit for the search warrant.

http://www.news10.net/news/RnR-Wellness-complaint.pdf

 

[MadBuddhaAbuser]

so i wonder why the first page says weed is a schedule II substance, then the actual complaint says I?

 

[Yes4Prop215]

i have friends who run a dispensary and honestly i could give a rats ass about the dispensary system...they are all greeedy as fuck, bragging about how they are gonna be millionaires... never walk right in to a club and sell it....meet a broker at his house and he takes it to the club for me...and i know there isnt any paperwork on it.

people who walk into clubs and sells LBs and fills out 1040s might be in trouble...you are basically creating evidence that can be used against you. safer to just sell black market, keep your stash as low as possible..and if you get caught just shut up and say its for personal....harder to charge you for a crime than if they have dispensary paperwork to show!

 

[MurderDeathKill]

good advice yes4

 

[greenmatter]

sounds like a shit load of the evidence is in the form of text messages and voice mails ......... might be a lesson in there

 

[Yes4Prop215]

after reading the affidavit sounds like power theft was the intial reason they raided the first grow house....his phone was in the process of calling the main defendant. the first grower, "goldsmith", his girlfriend basically snitched and told the cops that they were engaged in selling marijuana...they also heard "ventilation equipment consistent with marijuana production" and a k9 hit for marijuana...god damn!

the cell phone he was found with had 17,000 text messages....come on people delete messages and switch up phones often! its probably safer to just use voice because the text messages are recorded and show the entire record dating back to when it was first used...they also had voice mail messages that had them discussing transactions....although the DEA agent mentioned the texts were "crass" so maybe they can be dismissed as evidence in court...

they found pictures of cash and drugs in the guys iphone as well...and they found almost 300k in cash at the club owners house...way to operate a dispensary and have cash stashed at your own house...what a idiot!

shit they even got latent fingerprints off the electrical panel! and off the hoods...god damn! if you are at your friends grow dont touch anything...

these guys are also talking to the cops, telling the cops they were "contract growers" and that they supplied to the dispensary...way to snitch on yourself!

the father and son are sending eachother super incriminating text messages to eachother...not smart.

also, these guys are depositing funds into their bank accounts, in excess of thousands of dollars! why the fuck would you do that!!

they had paperwork receipts that directly linked them to eachother, BURN YOUR FUCKING RECEIPTS PEOPLE...these guys are very lucky they havent been hit with continued criminal enterprise..they had receipts that led to their warehouse storage, etc...seriously, you have a receipt for 47k worth of hydro equipment...are you gonna declare that on your tax deductions LMAO...BURN THAT SHIT!!!!


and holy shit....the ICING on the cake.. this kid had a video of himself auditioning for MTV true life. he talks about how hes happy that prop19 didnt pass, and that he is in it for a profit...WHAT A FUCKING IDIOT!! seriously hard to feel sympathy for this guy...

 

[Midnight]

Yep Y4P215, these tools were not the sharpest in the shed, that is for damn sure.

 

[MIway]

i have friends who run a dispensary and honestly i could give a rats ass about the dispensary system...they are all greeedy as fuck, bragging about how they are gonna be millionaires...

i understand this sentiment... see all around the place. not all of em, as in greedy to the bone, but a lot. hate the 'growers' that don't smoke too... crazy shit.

I'm so very encouraged by this news. You see everyone and their grandma included has arrived with the notion that owning a dispensary leads to untold riches & wealth.

I'm here to inform you all that the day has come. The opportunistic greed that compels those to open dispenaries under the guise that they're assisting and filling a need for those that are sick & dying is a [ SHAM,] and we're onto you. We no longer trust in you, because you lack the integrity to gain our faith and confidence.

We do not believe your lies, and guess what? The government doesn't either.

That they [ DISPENSARIES ] go down in flames will be our primary objective and [ MISSION STATEMENT.] I'll be there to hold a press conference that this is jus' but the beginning of a crusade to eradicate dispensaries from the face of California and the US of A.

The patient, the sick & dying, are no longer your friends, and we have turned on you, you the opportunistic evil & greedy dispensary owner. You will, with the assistance of the Federal Government be imprisoned to protect us from you. Never again will we march in your behalf as we did for Brian Eppis of Chico, when the FEDS came and took him away. Never again.

You are the wretched people, the vermin, the swine & THE FLY IN THE OINTMENT of this MOVEMENT, and we will like any other constituency based MOVEMENT clean house and fumigate COCKROACHES into the earth, as it opens wide and closes up over you, and swallows you whole into Gehenna.

Good Riddance!


THETRUTHHURTSDOTCOM

Let's bring this MOVEMENT back home to its roots and leave the cultivating to those who should be entitled to do so w/o the [ 2 ] sets of books needed to lie to us that you're not making a profit, but rather quite profitable in the exploitation of our sick & dying.

Yes the govt is jus' as evil, but they establish law where no one should feel above it. We need order and we cannot trust you, so this is why we must trust them to protect us from the likes of you.
You do not serve the best interests of your patient base.

You are evil.......evil incarnate.

although i get your being upset with the underlying capitalist system... you are terribly, terribly misguided. you just stated that people selling & growing weed for profit should be put in jail... cuz they are all evil. that's pretty fucked up... just alone... suggesting it would be right to incarcerate a person for weed...? maybe if they were lacing it with draino with the intent to make other people die... maybe something. but for those simply trying to turn a buck while dispensing other people's excesses... that's a bit much... a bit outta whack... little off in perspective... and advocacy. get a grip yo.

 

[Midnight]

While I don't want to see anyone go to jail over weed, I personally think that 99% of the dispensaries make a profit (in California anyways) and about 65% to %75 percent of the people (in california) that have medical cards are full of shit with regards to their medical condition. money talks, bullshit walks and everyone wants to ride for free. The free ride will be over soon imho.

 

[huligun]

If you are aware of the era of cocaine smuggling in the Miami area in the late 70s early 80s you may see a similarity. It was not legal, but it was wide open. Street thugs became super millionaires and operated freely for about 10 years. A lot of people got rich dealing with the smugglers. Once the government got a handle on it they shut it down. Banks, Car Lots shut down. Property values went down and there was an economic recession. All the money that was kept in Panama was taken by Ortega and all the money and assets in the USA went to the Fed. Everybody also went to jail.

It is not as cut and dry and shutting down a single cartel, like they did in Miami, but the fed will puzzle this. There is just too much money. They are concerned more about what they consider a 'Narco-Economy' than folks just medicating that are perfectly healthy. Their real concern is just the money. Money shapes society and shifts power. That is why I always advise people I care about to try to stay as small as possible. They are going to net up the bigger fish a long time before they get to the smaller fish. And just like Miami in the 70s, California is wide open.

 

[Midnight Rudy]

I would not want to be anyone that vended to them, if you did, you are in the feds cross hairs now. At the bottom of this post is a link to the affidavit that the feds used to get the search warrant, it has some pretty useful and interesting information in it. When they raided dudes house he had 17 plants growing there and they let him keep them because his wife had a card.

I would strongly encourage everyone to read the affidavit for the search warrant.

http://www.news10.net/news/RnR-Wellness-complaint.pdf

Good read... LEO had thousands of text messages and photos laying out everything that they did. account numbers and client names etc... good reminder to clear your phone every now and again. Nobody involved had ever deleted a message or a picture it seems.

I gotta say, I don't feel too sorry for them. We should be able to make a good proffit with MJ, but that isn't how the laws are written and if this keeps up then there soon won't be dispensaries at all. None of this helps my non MMJ state one bit. Only gives them more reasons not to try it.

 

[Headbandf1]

What I haven't seen mentioned yet is this Disp had a parking lot Gun fight almost a month before this arrest. Think 2 or3 shot, and maybe 0 dead or 1 dead cant remember

 

[nomaad]

IMPORTANT NOTE: I am noticing some misconceptions about "deleting msgs" on your phones.

When you delete a text msg from your cellphone all you are doing is erasing the directory information that leads the phone's basic software to that msg... But the information still resides on the memory chip. (Unless you are rocking a rooted android device with an app that will effectively write 0s and 1s over the sectors of memory that have been "erased")

You are carrying around your entire msg history. In some cases, once you have a lot of data on the phone, it will start writing over itself. This is not the same a secure data deletion that just write random data, often several times over... In the case of a stock phone, a foresnsic data recovery specialist could peal those layers of your msgs apart.

LEO or anyone with access to a Cellebrite system can suck it all off your device... believe it can even circumvent the access codes in android and iOS handheld devices.

Same goes for android devices except that they have a factory reset utility built in that supposedly formats the drive. I am not sure what kind of recovery abilities are out there, but I would do it 3-5 times before i would feel comfortable... or use a secure delete utility after doing the factory reset. I'd look for a factory reset deadman widget to hit on your home screen for when you see the lights or hear the door bust in. Homeboy had time to call and further implicate his partner as the cops busted in... he might have had time to erase those 17,000 txts!!!! sorry...

New Android tablets have a full encryption system that seems like TrueCrypt (fuill HD encryption from Boot) and perhaps this could be ported to Android phones somehow... I am still looking into how the encryption works and whether it is up to snuff for me to use. And because you boot thru it, when its sleeping but still on, it will be decrypted. Useful, but most people leave their tabs sleeping rather than off when they are not using/charging, etc. Just shutting it off before they take it will do the trick. Would be very cool to extend this functionality to Android phones.

 

[r1tony]

Common sense, if you are texting anything anytime worth incriminating. Guess this information is for people who lost their common sense.

 

[supermanlives]

dont suprise me one bit. the last one i belonged to got raided.

 

[Midnight Rudy]

IMPORTANT NOTE: I am noticing some misconceptions about "deleting msgs" on your phones.

When you delete a text msg from your cellphone all you are doing is erasing the directory information that leads the phone's basic software to that msg... But the information still resides on the memory chip. (Unless you are rocking a rooted android device with an app that will effectively write 0s and 1s over the sectors of memory that have been "erased")

You are carrying around your entire msg history. In some cases, once you have a lot of data on the phone, it will start writing over itself. This is not the same a secure data deletion that just write random data, often several times over... In the case of a stock phone, a foresnsic data recovery specialist could peal those layers of your msgs apart.

LEO or anyone with access to a Cellebrite system can suck it all off your device... believe it can even circumvent the access codes in android and iOS handheld devices.

Same goes for android devices except that they have a factory reset utility built in that supposedly formats the drive. I am not sure what kind of recovery abilities are out there, but I would do it 3-5 times before i would feel comfortable... or use a secure delete utility after doing the factory reset. I'd look for a factory reset deadman widget to hit on your home screen for when you see the lights or hear the door bust in. Homeboy had time to call and further implicate his partner as the cops busted in... he might have had time to erase those 17,000 txts!!!! sorry...

New Android tablets have a full encryption system that seems like TrueCrypt (fuill HD encryption from Boot) and perhaps this could be ported to Android phones somehow... I am still looking into how the encryption works and whether it is up to snuff for me to use. And because you boot thru it, when its sleeping but still on, it will be decrypted. Useful, but most people leave their tabs sleeping rather than off when they are not using/charging, etc. Just shutting it off before they take it will do the trick. Would be very cool to extend this functionality to Android phones.

Good lookin out Nomaad. thanks for the info. I just recently got a possession ticket in one of the few cities in my state that doesn't give criminal arrests for minor possession. Luckily my blackberry popped out of my pocket and got run over by a car only hours before this all happened. I can't tell you ho many thank you prayers that inspired! Sometimes karma is on my side, but almost never twice, so this has been a big concern to me. I am small time and mostly personal, but I have 2 or 3 friends that I have helped get started in the same fashion and we (did) shoot pics and texts back and forth quite a bit. Now it is only voice for us unfortunately which is the best protection. For someone who is running weight though, this is an invaluable lesson. Most smartphones you can backup contacts and calender, so if you can get a reliable delete it should be easy enough to get the important stuff back.

 

[Securityfirst]

I feel bad for the guy in San Diego. That was some random shithole bust if I ever saw one! He got caught with 756 plants? They also found a bank receipt in his house with a large deposit. The obvious retard move by Bryan the owner is that he had close to 300000 at his house, lot of it was vacuum sealed. This is in the same house that they were stealing electricity? WTF

 

[CanniDo Cowboy]

I suppose this is as good as place as any to post the following. I'm glad to see there are others who question the legitimacy of dispensaries in general. I wrote this sometime back: CC

The Disposing Of Excess Meds Through Legal Channels.
First, perhaps "disposing of" isnt quite the best description but never-the-less, y'all get the meaning. Somewhere amidst or just beyond the next few weeks or so, another fall harvest will get into full swing. With that, I offer up the following:

So you grow for yourself and maybe for a few others. Or many. If so, at some point and if things go well, you may find yourself with excess meds over and beyond the legal amount as prescribed per California 215 rules and regs or more important, by the powers that think they be who happen to ramrod the county in which you reside. (Be careful of those zoning violations, they can be a real bitch!) When you find yourself with excess meds, it's usually a case of one or 2 reasons. Either you planned for it to happen or you didnt. Duh! In either case, you have 2 options at this point. "Dispose" or sell to a legally recognized outlet (dispensary/club) or travel the black market hiway. If you planned it, you most likely already have a plan. Or maybe youre new at the game and just working on the dream that your friend, cousin or ex brother-in-law sold you on. The "dream" of course includes making boocoo bucks, buying a yacht and sailing into the sunset. There are other dreams but they all share the same idea. In any case, you have your excess. Now what? By the way, if you decide to just up and give your excess away to those less fortunate, bless ya pard, you are my hero...

I wont spend a lot of time discussing the black market hiway. If you have reliable and safe connections, more power to you. It can be a rough and uncertain road fraught with shady characters, deals gone bad and lost friends who may or may not have been your friends to begin with. Med deals have a way of letting you know which is which and it is usually at a time that you can afford it the least. I know of what I speak. My own personal attempt at navigating the black market hiway is littered with the remains of friendships and even family relationships who sure could talk the talk, but couldnt walk the walk a lick.

On the other hand, the legal side of "disposing of", can be a capitalistic nightmare. I say capitalistic, because in the end, when the product finally reaches the shelf of the only recognized legal outlet AKA: dispensary, club, co-op, collective etc., it is indeed, all about wholesale buying and retail selling. The reasons for the nightmare are many but the most formidable and undeniable yet simple reason why is because IT IS really THE one and only legal avenue and growers have no real organizational bargaining power. (OK,maybe that's 2). We should have, but we dont. While I'm sure this topic has been discussed over a med pipe time and time again it is very rare when stoner speak gets much accomplished. By now, some readers are probably thinking 'ol CC has a dispensary axe to grind. Well, yes and not entirely. Yes because they arent really what they fashion themselves to be and not entirely because they do serve a purpose for those who have no other alternative in which to procure meds. The "more med choices" thinking that some dispensary frequenters apply is valid, but the quality of 100 strains to chose from may be no better than having only five.

A closer look for those who care, those who wonder and for those who are even semi-aware they occupy the planet: In order for dispensaries to operate, everyone who walks thru the door is required to become a member. The theory being the dispensary is a co-op and you must be a member of said co-op in order to "do business". It's the "closed loop" loophole if you will. As a member, I can now buy from the dispensary, they in turn can sell to me. I can even sell my excess to my designated co-op who in turn sells it to my fellow members. Here unfortunately or perhaps I should say mystically, I as a member of the co-op, have no real say in either price - the buying or selling. It should be noted here that some dispensaries supply their own med inventory and turn away venders. And there in-lies my largest objection to dispensaries. That, my friends, is NOT how a true co-op was designed to operate. More-over, if you are a member of a true co-op, there is really no such thing as a "vendor". Just members combining products for a common goal. And because not every member participates in the process of supplying product back to the dispensary/co-op as is the norm today, it simply makes the dispensary a business for profit. And dont get me started on the non-profit part. Sorry, to me, that is just an advertising gimmick.

Short and sweet, a true-co-op is operated by the members themselves. Together, they combine their products of whatever they are growing: corn, dairy products, grapes etc and the basic idea is that together, they insure a better chance of individual business survival. They also exchange ideas and methods not only product wise but also together, they share a voice as to how the co-op should be operated to insure overall success. With this collective power, they can grow their product cheaper and together, and more important, decide their own price structure. Co-ops and collectives have been operating this way forever. Incidentally, more and more growers, with todays economy, have been forced to form co-ops just to survive. But in the dispensary game, members do not decide anything. There is no exchange of ideas or methods, and there certainly isnt any member decisions in regard to price structure- wholesale or retail. And if the membership is prevented from selling their product to their own co-op... something is terribly wrong. And for those of you who would say: "But my dispensary is great! Wonderful, caring, compassionate folks...!" First, if that were completely true, they would operate similar to the Dollar Store. And there would be no need for bottom, middle and top shelf marketing schemes simply because price wise, it doesnt cost anymore to grow topshelf than it does bottom shelf product, in most cases. IMO, the 3 potency grades are similar to shopping for a reliable and average Honda Accord, stepping up to a stripped down Acura or shooting the works and splurging for the fully loaded Caddy. In business success, one of the basics rules is being able to offer everybody something they can afford. Is that being wonderful, compassionate and caring? Of course not. Business is always business.

So who's to blame for the co-op sham? We as so-called members of dispensaries/clubs are to blame. If we ask for nothing, we get nothing. If we fail to question, dont expect answers. If we are to lazy to demand change, the only change you will receive-is from your transaction at your so-called dispensary/club/co-op/collective or whatever they are calling themselves...CC