-
Happy Birthday ICMag! Been 20 years since Gypsy Nirvana created the forum! We are celebrating with a 4/20 Giveaway and by launching a new Patreon tier called "420club". You can read more here.
-
Important notice: ICMag's T.O.U. has been updated. Please review it here. For your convenience, it is also available in the main forum menu, under 'Quick Links"!
Sad News on RC...PLEASE READ...
- Thread starter Gypsy Nirvana
- Start date
- Status
As far as I know,things have been resolved.
I'm not at liberty to say too much,but I believe that RC's conditional release dictates that he has NOTHING to do with online canna-business.
That said,I can tell you this much-I know to be FACT that the RCMP never seized the Overgrow servers,and the data contained therein was never compromised.
Update completed.
Howzzat?
I'm not at liberty to say too much,but I believe that RC's conditional release dictates that he has NOTHING to do with online canna-business.
That said,I can tell you this much-I know to be FACT that the RCMP never seized the Overgrow servers,and the data contained therein was never compromised.
Update completed.
Howzzat?
Last edited:
That said,I can tell you this much-I know to be FACT that the RCMP never seized the Overgrow servers,and the data contained therein was never compromised.
Iwaited ALONG time to hear that...........can U say whewwwwwwwwwwwwwww.......................................
blessedBE
Iwaited ALONG time to hear that...........can U say whewwwwwwwwwwwwwww.......................................
blessedBE
Thanks Rezdog...
Thanks Rezdog...
.....for having the BALLZ to post!
Hmmmn, the Overgrow server, ya can't ping it anymore but it's..........
......somewhere.
Thanks Rezdog...
.....for having the BALLZ to post!
Hmmmn, the Overgrow server, ya can't ping it anymore but it's..........
......somewhere.
T
tricky
As far as I know,things have been resolved.
I'm not at liberty to say too much,but I believe that RC's conditional release dictates that he has NOTHING to do with online canna-business.
That said,I can tell you this much-I know to be FACT that the RCMP never seized the Overgrow servers,and the data contained therein was never compromised.
Update completed.
Howzzat?
AMEN TO THAT
dddownlowww
Member
Very glad to read that post REZ.
ddd
ddd
folkmaster
Member
Thanks for the update Rez.... Sounds like they are taking away his right of free speech as one of his conditions for remaining out of prison. I find that very disturbing, though not surprising. Hopefully OG comes back some day, if for no other reason than to just ram it back down this government's evil gullet....
Overgrow has been more than adequately replaced since its takedown by ICM. Indeed, ICM has far surpassed the quality of info on the old OG in the passing years. The community is not terribly different. To the extent there were a lot of kids on OG who moved on to Rollitup, while the more experienced growers came here insted? So much the better.
Restarting OG under current circumstances would be counterproductive.
Restarting OG under current circumstances would be counterproductive.
G
Green Supreme
VERY interesting. The BC Court of Appeal has already answered this matter in other circumstances. They suggested the proper sentence would be 30 days.
Sentencing is always personal to the accused, but the 30 days opinion of the BCCA is highly persuasive.
I'd love to hear the results of this. Anybody know more?
nycKid
Member
The real story...by Leif M. Wright, Phoenix Staff Writer, (Source:Muskogee Daily Phoenix)
Regional News
US OK: Edu: Should Marijuana Be Legalized? Anti-
US OK: Edu: Should Marijuana Be Legalized? Pro-
US OK: Teacher Back In Classroom After Drug Charge
US OK: Editorial: Feds Should Butt Out Of Pot Laws
US OK: Depressing dope: Is Marijuana A Cause Or Effect For Teens?
US OK: Forum To Discuss Medical Marijuana
More News
Select a State See Map Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia FEDERAL Florida Georgia Guam Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Puerto Rico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virgin Islands Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming
Check State Laws
17 Feb 2006
Share This Article
Oklahoma
-------
GreenThum43215: Hey, are you the Phoenix guy?
LeifMWright: Yes. Who's this?
GreenThum43215: You interested in an internet story?
LeifMWright: I'm all ears.
GreenThum43215: Have you ever heard of overgrow.com?
That Internet chat began the weirdest column I've ever undertaken, one full of international intrigue, secret marijuana gardens, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Drug Enforcement Administration, a shady character with an Armenian name, a former movie actor turned marijuana seed dealer and tens of thousands of freaked-out potheads who started what I call the Marijuana Bean Field Wars.
Overgrow.com was the world's largest marijuana cultivation Web site, and possibly the largest single marketplace of illegal ideas in the history of the world. The site taught growers the ins and outs of the plant and how to increase their yields and ostensibly increase the THC content. THC is the chemical believed to cause the "high" of marijuana.
At its peak before Jan. 31, Overgrow.com had more than 100,000 active members -- a massive amount for all but the largest web sites, and certainly for one that exchanged information that is illegal in most places.
Jan. 31, the site disappeared. Poof. Up in smoke, you might say. It had warned users a couple of days earlier that it would be undergoing server upgrades, so expect some outages. So no one panicked.
A day later, the site was still gone. Potheads, who are notoriously paranoid already, began to wig out.
What if the site had been busted? Would members be subject to prosecution based on the information they had shared on the site? Had authorities been watching the whole time, building up information so they could attack?
The War Begins
GreenThum43215: A lot of people around here are freaking out.
Probably an understatement.
I started searching the Internet for information about Overgrow.com. I found a slew of forums and dozens of sites repeating the same news: Overgrow.com and its parent site, Heaven's Stairway, had been shut down, their Canadian owner arrested, his house raided and his family jailed.
Heaven's Stairway was a seed distribution company. Marijuana growers call the seeds "beans." Heaven's Stairway, according to Canadian pot activist Marc Emery, had to be the largest seed merchant in North America, selling cannabis seeds all across Canada and the United States, and probably to other countries, too.
The stories on the Internet didn't answer some key questions. Were the Web sites shut down by Canadian authorities, or were they, as Emery's own bust nine months earlier, done in cooperation with the DEA?
Who was the mysterious owner of the sites, and what happened to him? Was he in jail? Was he out? Was he even alive?
What happened to the records of his seed business and the logs on his site that could possibly lead police to those who frequented the site?
Internet forums were atwitter with the details -- or lack of them.
It seems the sites were owned by a Richard Calrisian in Montreal. But later, it seemed "Calrisian" had been an alias. His real name was Richard Baghdadlian. And later, it seemed "Richard" was an alias, too. His real name, they asserted, was Hratch Baghdadlian.
No one seemed to be able to find any official records of his arrest, or even of an investigation.
That, the growers seemed unified in believing, was even more ominous. If the cops had busted Baghdadlian but hadn't arrested him, it could be that they were still investigating -- or worse, Baghdadlian was cooperating with them, singing like a canary, selling out seed customers, seed merchants and growers all over the continent.
I called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police headquarters in Ottawa.
"We don't confirm or deny if there is an ongoing investigation," said Sgt. Nathalie Dechenes, spokesman for the RCMP. "So we wouldn't tell you either way. I don't know if we even have authority to shut down Web sites."
So I called Emery, who was busted nine months ago and is facing extradition to the United States on charges of selling marijuana seeds in the U.S.
"I'm facing 31 years in a maximum security federal prison," Emery said. "It seems to me if Baghdadlian was facing the same thing, he might have started cooperating if they offered to drop the investigation in the U.S. and keep him in Canada."
Emery had run a seed company in competition with Heaven's Stairway. When he was busted, his computers were seized ( "Nothing was on them," he said ), and his clients in the United States started receiving blue sheets of paper asking them to confirm orders they had placed with his company.
"It was essentially an effort to try to get them to incriminate themselves," he said. "But most were smart enough to hit my Web site and find out it was the DEA and not us sending those notices out."
Meanwhile, several cannabis-related sites were breaking out into full civil war over the Overgrow debacle.
On one side was a fomer movie actor who had had a bit part in a Jean-Claude VanDamme flick and now was calling himself "Gypsy Nirvana." He claimed to have spoken with "RC," which was a pseudonym for Baghdadlian ( growers seem to be big on initials and acronyms ).
RC, Nirvana assured everyone, had been arrested, but he was out on bail and he had shut down the servers when he learned of the impending raid -- everyone's information was safe.
Dissenters began to surface, however, saying Nirvana had a profit motive in mind; he wanted Heaven's Stairway's seed business.
On the other side was someone calling himself "Plural of Mongoose," who apparently commanded great respect in the growing community. He also claimed to have spoken with RC, who had told him several lies, some of which, combined with a friend being busted, led him to believe RC was cooperating with the authorities.
Caught in the middle was Emery, whose own case had generated a lot of publicity, and who is loved by about half the growing community and violently hated by the other half. Emery's initial statement on the matter had been that Baghdadlian, tired of the seed business, had decided it was time to bail, so he shut up shop and took off to greener pastures, no pun intended.
The battle raged on in Internet boards with Nirvana accusing Emery of being a jerk for revealing Baghdadlian's name and phone number on his own site.
Others said Baghdadlian was the jerk for leaving his business partners high and dry, wondering if they could be busted at any time based on information from his servers.
No Bust, No Investigation, Mom Says
I called a number given on one site for Baghdadlian. A woman answered and gave her name as "Mrs. Baghdadlian."
She confirmed that Hratch is her son and that he was the proprietor of Heaven's Stairway and Overgrow.com.
"Nothing has happened, there is nothing right now," she said in an Armenian accent. "He has not been arrested. There is no investigation."
I asked her if Baghdadlian had shut the servers down himself. She started stuttering.
"Um," she said. "I don't think I can say anything more than this."
I asked if she knew where I could reach him to talk to him. She said she did not.
"Wow," Emery said when I told him about the conversation. "That sure lends credence to the idea that he took the money and ran."
It's possible that Baghdadlian had noticed an increased amount of government servers hitting his sites, saw the writing on the wall and bailed. Emery agreed it was possible.
"Before I was raided, about six weeks before, there was a huge Department of Justice focus on our Web site," he said. "Our server logs revealed their IP addresses and we were able to do a whois on them and find out where the hits were coming from."
Taking the money and running would explain Baghdadlian's silence -- and the silence of law enforcement, which had thrown a big media party when they busted Emery, patting themselves very publicly on the back for such a large takedown.
What Does It Mean to You?
The bottom line is those who were doing business with Baghdadlian and Emery were breaking the law if they were doing it in the United States -- they took a tremendous risk to break the law, and they are likely wise to be worried.
Doing that business over the Internet may have given people a false sense of security, since the Internet allows people to feel "anonymous."
In the marijuana growing community, the disappearance of Overgrow has made them rudely aware that Internet anonymity is an illusion.
For law enforcement, if there was no bust, they may still benefit from Baghdadlian's disappearance. Growers all over the Internet were proclaiming that they were done -- they were shutting their operations down for fear "LEO" would come get them based on information obtained from Baghdadlian's debacle.
The net gain for law enforcement is a new paranoia in the cannabis-growing world -- and fewer people growing, which means shorter supply and less headache for "LEO."
The average, law-abiding citizen can take a good message away from the mess, too, though. The message:
"You're never anonymous," Emery said. "It's impossible. Governments are investing huge amounts of money to monitor what's going on on the Internet. If they're interested in knowing something, they'll get it."
Protecting yourself over the Internet -- even in legitimate business - -- should take top priority. You may never have thought about breaking a law yourself, but your information is scattered all over the Internet, and those with less scruples than you can easily gain access to it and use it to defraud you.
Be careful. The Internet is still a rough new frontier, much like Oklahoma was in the Land Run years. You may not be facing droughts and maurading bandits, but you face less-than-honest people who will take your information and use it to hurt you.
"Never do business with anyone who won't give you a real name," Emery said.
More importantly, never do online business with a company you haven't thoroughly seen to be trustworthy. Even big companies suffer from "phishing," where people will pretend to be the big companies and request personal information from you, which is later used to defraud you.
For those doing illegal business over the Internet, my advice is this: Just don't.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake
Share This Article
Pubdate: Fri, 17 Feb 2006
Source: Muskogee Daily Phoenix (OK)
Copyright: 2006 Muskogee Daily Phoenix
Contact: http://www.muskogeephoenix.com/customerservice/contactus.html
Website: http://www.muskogeephoenix.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3319
Author: Leif M. Wright, Phoenix Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)
Regional News
US OK: Edu: Should Marijuana Be Legalized? Anti-
US OK: Edu: Should Marijuana Be Legalized? Pro-
US OK: Teacher Back In Classroom After Drug Charge
US OK: Editorial: Feds Should Butt Out Of Pot Laws
US OK: Depressing dope: Is Marijuana A Cause Or Effect For Teens?
US OK: Forum To Discuss Medical Marijuana
More News
Select a State See Map Alabama Alaska Arizona Arkansas California Colorado Connecticut Delaware District of Columbia FEDERAL Florida Georgia Guam Hawaii Idaho Illinois Indiana Iowa Kansas Kentucky Louisiana Maine Maryland Massachusetts Michigan Minnesota Mississippi Missouri Montana Nebraska Nevada New Hampshire New Jersey New Mexico New York North Carolina North Dakota Ohio Oklahoma Oregon Pennsylvania Puerto Rico Rhode Island South Carolina South Dakota Tennessee Texas Utah Vermont Virgin Islands Virginia Washington West Virginia Wisconsin Wyoming
Check State Laws
17 Feb 2006
Share This Article
Oklahoma
-------
GreenThum43215: Hey, are you the Phoenix guy?
LeifMWright: Yes. Who's this?
GreenThum43215: You interested in an internet story?
LeifMWright: I'm all ears.
GreenThum43215: Have you ever heard of overgrow.com?
That Internet chat began the weirdest column I've ever undertaken, one full of international intrigue, secret marijuana gardens, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Drug Enforcement Administration, a shady character with an Armenian name, a former movie actor turned marijuana seed dealer and tens of thousands of freaked-out potheads who started what I call the Marijuana Bean Field Wars.
Overgrow.com was the world's largest marijuana cultivation Web site, and possibly the largest single marketplace of illegal ideas in the history of the world. The site taught growers the ins and outs of the plant and how to increase their yields and ostensibly increase the THC content. THC is the chemical believed to cause the "high" of marijuana.
At its peak before Jan. 31, Overgrow.com had more than 100,000 active members -- a massive amount for all but the largest web sites, and certainly for one that exchanged information that is illegal in most places.
Jan. 31, the site disappeared. Poof. Up in smoke, you might say. It had warned users a couple of days earlier that it would be undergoing server upgrades, so expect some outages. So no one panicked.
A day later, the site was still gone. Potheads, who are notoriously paranoid already, began to wig out.
What if the site had been busted? Would members be subject to prosecution based on the information they had shared on the site? Had authorities been watching the whole time, building up information so they could attack?
The War Begins
GreenThum43215: A lot of people around here are freaking out.
Probably an understatement.
I started searching the Internet for information about Overgrow.com. I found a slew of forums and dozens of sites repeating the same news: Overgrow.com and its parent site, Heaven's Stairway, had been shut down, their Canadian owner arrested, his house raided and his family jailed.
Heaven's Stairway was a seed distribution company. Marijuana growers call the seeds "beans." Heaven's Stairway, according to Canadian pot activist Marc Emery, had to be the largest seed merchant in North America, selling cannabis seeds all across Canada and the United States, and probably to other countries, too.
The stories on the Internet didn't answer some key questions. Were the Web sites shut down by Canadian authorities, or were they, as Emery's own bust nine months earlier, done in cooperation with the DEA?
Who was the mysterious owner of the sites, and what happened to him? Was he in jail? Was he out? Was he even alive?
What happened to the records of his seed business and the logs on his site that could possibly lead police to those who frequented the site?
Internet forums were atwitter with the details -- or lack of them.
It seems the sites were owned by a Richard Calrisian in Montreal. But later, it seemed "Calrisian" had been an alias. His real name was Richard Baghdadlian. And later, it seemed "Richard" was an alias, too. His real name, they asserted, was Hratch Baghdadlian.
No one seemed to be able to find any official records of his arrest, or even of an investigation.
That, the growers seemed unified in believing, was even more ominous. If the cops had busted Baghdadlian but hadn't arrested him, it could be that they were still investigating -- or worse, Baghdadlian was cooperating with them, singing like a canary, selling out seed customers, seed merchants and growers all over the continent.
I called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police headquarters in Ottawa.
"We don't confirm or deny if there is an ongoing investigation," said Sgt. Nathalie Dechenes, spokesman for the RCMP. "So we wouldn't tell you either way. I don't know if we even have authority to shut down Web sites."
So I called Emery, who was busted nine months ago and is facing extradition to the United States on charges of selling marijuana seeds in the U.S.
"I'm facing 31 years in a maximum security federal prison," Emery said. "It seems to me if Baghdadlian was facing the same thing, he might have started cooperating if they offered to drop the investigation in the U.S. and keep him in Canada."
Emery had run a seed company in competition with Heaven's Stairway. When he was busted, his computers were seized ( "Nothing was on them," he said ), and his clients in the United States started receiving blue sheets of paper asking them to confirm orders they had placed with his company.
"It was essentially an effort to try to get them to incriminate themselves," he said. "But most were smart enough to hit my Web site and find out it was the DEA and not us sending those notices out."
Meanwhile, several cannabis-related sites were breaking out into full civil war over the Overgrow debacle.
On one side was a fomer movie actor who had had a bit part in a Jean-Claude VanDamme flick and now was calling himself "Gypsy Nirvana." He claimed to have spoken with "RC," which was a pseudonym for Baghdadlian ( growers seem to be big on initials and acronyms ).
RC, Nirvana assured everyone, had been arrested, but he was out on bail and he had shut down the servers when he learned of the impending raid -- everyone's information was safe.
Dissenters began to surface, however, saying Nirvana had a profit motive in mind; he wanted Heaven's Stairway's seed business.
On the other side was someone calling himself "Plural of Mongoose," who apparently commanded great respect in the growing community. He also claimed to have spoken with RC, who had told him several lies, some of which, combined with a friend being busted, led him to believe RC was cooperating with the authorities.
Caught in the middle was Emery, whose own case had generated a lot of publicity, and who is loved by about half the growing community and violently hated by the other half. Emery's initial statement on the matter had been that Baghdadlian, tired of the seed business, had decided it was time to bail, so he shut up shop and took off to greener pastures, no pun intended.
The battle raged on in Internet boards with Nirvana accusing Emery of being a jerk for revealing Baghdadlian's name and phone number on his own site.
Others said Baghdadlian was the jerk for leaving his business partners high and dry, wondering if they could be busted at any time based on information from his servers.
No Bust, No Investigation, Mom Says
I called a number given on one site for Baghdadlian. A woman answered and gave her name as "Mrs. Baghdadlian."
She confirmed that Hratch is her son and that he was the proprietor of Heaven's Stairway and Overgrow.com.
"Nothing has happened, there is nothing right now," she said in an Armenian accent. "He has not been arrested. There is no investigation."
I asked her if Baghdadlian had shut the servers down himself. She started stuttering.
"Um," she said. "I don't think I can say anything more than this."
I asked if she knew where I could reach him to talk to him. She said she did not.
"Wow," Emery said when I told him about the conversation. "That sure lends credence to the idea that he took the money and ran."
It's possible that Baghdadlian had noticed an increased amount of government servers hitting his sites, saw the writing on the wall and bailed. Emery agreed it was possible.
"Before I was raided, about six weeks before, there was a huge Department of Justice focus on our Web site," he said. "Our server logs revealed their IP addresses and we were able to do a whois on them and find out where the hits were coming from."
Taking the money and running would explain Baghdadlian's silence -- and the silence of law enforcement, which had thrown a big media party when they busted Emery, patting themselves very publicly on the back for such a large takedown.
What Does It Mean to You?
The bottom line is those who were doing business with Baghdadlian and Emery were breaking the law if they were doing it in the United States -- they took a tremendous risk to break the law, and they are likely wise to be worried.
Doing that business over the Internet may have given people a false sense of security, since the Internet allows people to feel "anonymous."
In the marijuana growing community, the disappearance of Overgrow has made them rudely aware that Internet anonymity is an illusion.
For law enforcement, if there was no bust, they may still benefit from Baghdadlian's disappearance. Growers all over the Internet were proclaiming that they were done -- they were shutting their operations down for fear "LEO" would come get them based on information obtained from Baghdadlian's debacle.
The net gain for law enforcement is a new paranoia in the cannabis-growing world -- and fewer people growing, which means shorter supply and less headache for "LEO."
The average, law-abiding citizen can take a good message away from the mess, too, though. The message:
"You're never anonymous," Emery said. "It's impossible. Governments are investing huge amounts of money to monitor what's going on on the Internet. If they're interested in knowing something, they'll get it."
Protecting yourself over the Internet -- even in legitimate business - -- should take top priority. You may never have thought about breaking a law yourself, but your information is scattered all over the Internet, and those with less scruples than you can easily gain access to it and use it to defraud you.
Be careful. The Internet is still a rough new frontier, much like Oklahoma was in the Land Run years. You may not be facing droughts and maurading bandits, but you face less-than-honest people who will take your information and use it to hurt you.
"Never do business with anyone who won't give you a real name," Emery said.
More importantly, never do online business with a company you haven't thoroughly seen to be trustworthy. Even big companies suffer from "phishing," where people will pretend to be the big companies and request personal information from you, which is later used to defraud you.
For those doing illegal business over the Internet, my advice is this: Just don't.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
MAP posted-by: Richard Lake
Share This Article
Pubdate: Fri, 17 Feb 2006
Source: Muskogee Daily Phoenix (OK)
Copyright: 2006 Muskogee Daily Phoenix
Contact: http://www.muskogeephoenix.com/customerservice/contactus.html
Website: http://www.muskogeephoenix.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3319
Author: Leif M. Wright, Phoenix Staff Writer
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/pot.htm (Cannabis)
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion)
I totally disagree.
nycKid
Member
The End of the RC SaGA...
from an article in Montreals La Presse from Thursday February 19th 2009:
By André Cédilot
With the approval of a Quebec Court judge, the Federal Ministry of justice seized websites belonging to a Montreal trafficker who became a millionaire through the worldwide sale of cannabis seeds. Internet users who click on one of the seven websites will be surprised to see the buffalo logo of the RCMP.
" If we hadn't confiscated the websites anyone could have continued to use the domain names for trafficking purposes" explained prosecutor Caroline Cloutier. Evidence revealed that Richard Hratch Baghdadlian had made sales evaluated at 3,2 million dollars between march 2000 and september 2005.
Arrested in february 2006 after an unprecedented investigation, Baghdadlian 41, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy, importation and exportation of marijuana seeds and inciting people to consume cannabis. Five of his associates also plead guilty and received suspended sentences of six months to two years. It will be up to judge Jean-Pierre Boyer to establish Baghdadlians sentence. The Crown, represented by Maître François Blanchette wants a five year jail sentence while Maître Loris Cavaliere, for the defense, is asking for a sentence with no jail time ( "to be served in the community").
On the legal level this case was peculiar in that it is legal to plant a hemp seed, to produce clothing for example. But Maître Blanchette pointed out that "Since 1998 it is illegal to sell viable cannabis seeds, meaning those used to produce marijuana in a greenhouse or otherwise". In this case Baghdadlians websites and the nature of messages posted there where quite explicit in describing the nature of the diverse varieties of seeds he put on the world market.
The RCMPs investigation revealed that Baghdadlian would obtain seeds in bulk by (mail or courrier, same word in french...) from New-Zealand and Australia especially but also from the Netherlands and other European countries. After sorting them out in the basement of his Marsan street Quadruplex in Cartierville (a Montreal neighbourhood) he would pack them and ship them out to internet users who had placed an order. Most of his customers were in the U.S. and Europe.
(the last paragraph is just RCMP propaganda about how many joints could have been produced and unleashed on the streets thanks to RC and the Stairway)
nycKID
from an article in Montreals La Presse from Thursday February 19th 2009:
By André Cédilot
With the approval of a Quebec Court judge, the Federal Ministry of justice seized websites belonging to a Montreal trafficker who became a millionaire through the worldwide sale of cannabis seeds. Internet users who click on one of the seven websites will be surprised to see the buffalo logo of the RCMP.
" If we hadn't confiscated the websites anyone could have continued to use the domain names for trafficking purposes" explained prosecutor Caroline Cloutier. Evidence revealed that Richard Hratch Baghdadlian had made sales evaluated at 3,2 million dollars between march 2000 and september 2005.
Arrested in february 2006 after an unprecedented investigation, Baghdadlian 41, pleaded guilty to charges of conspiracy, importation and exportation of marijuana seeds and inciting people to consume cannabis. Five of his associates also plead guilty and received suspended sentences of six months to two years. It will be up to judge Jean-Pierre Boyer to establish Baghdadlians sentence. The Crown, represented by Maître François Blanchette wants a five year jail sentence while Maître Loris Cavaliere, for the defense, is asking for a sentence with no jail time ( "to be served in the community").
On the legal level this case was peculiar in that it is legal to plant a hemp seed, to produce clothing for example. But Maître Blanchette pointed out that "Since 1998 it is illegal to sell viable cannabis seeds, meaning those used to produce marijuana in a greenhouse or otherwise". In this case Baghdadlians websites and the nature of messages posted there where quite explicit in describing the nature of the diverse varieties of seeds he put on the world market.
The RCMPs investigation revealed that Baghdadlian would obtain seeds in bulk by (mail or courrier, same word in french...) from New-Zealand and Australia especially but also from the Netherlands and other European countries. After sorting them out in the basement of his Marsan street Quadruplex in Cartierville (a Montreal neighbourhood) he would pack them and ship them out to internet users who had placed an order. Most of his customers were in the U.S. and Europe.
(the last paragraph is just RCMP propaganda about how many joints could have been produced and unleashed on the streets thanks to RC and the Stairway)
nycKID
C
Classyathome
Thanks
nycKid
Member
RC's Sentencing
RC's Sentencing
What Sentence for Marijuana Seed Dealer?
Online marijuana seed seller Richard Hratch Baghdadlian is facing imprisonment in Canada for five years.
Is he a hardened on-line marijuana dealer or an enterprising entrepreneur?
A Montreal judge will decide and sentence him in the way he sees fit.
The Crown says Richard Hratch Bagdadlian knew exactly what he was doing when he broke the law and wants him to serve five years behind bars.
The RCMP arrested him for exporting and importing marijuana seeds on the Web.
Investigators say the company got 30 orders a day, at 100 dollars per order, buying and selling seeds all over the world.
His company Heaven's Stairway made as much as 800-thousand dollars in gross revenues in only one year with Bagdadlian pocketing about 150-thousand of that.
The 41-year-old Montreal man pleaded guilty to the charges.
But during his sentencing hearing, Bagdadlian insisted it was all above board: registering the company, hiring workers, shipping his goods in a transparent fashion, filing tax returns, the whole nine yards.
His lawyer says his client believed it was a legit venture, wasn't doing anything under the radar and should not get jail time, but rather a community sentence.
- Article By Shuyee Lee, CJAD - Thursday, October 29 2009
nycKID
RC's Sentencing
What Sentence for Marijuana Seed Dealer?
Online marijuana seed seller Richard Hratch Baghdadlian is facing imprisonment in Canada for five years.
Is he a hardened on-line marijuana dealer or an enterprising entrepreneur?
A Montreal judge will decide and sentence him in the way he sees fit.
The Crown says Richard Hratch Bagdadlian knew exactly what he was doing when he broke the law and wants him to serve five years behind bars.
The RCMP arrested him for exporting and importing marijuana seeds on the Web.
Investigators say the company got 30 orders a day, at 100 dollars per order, buying and selling seeds all over the world.
His company Heaven's Stairway made as much as 800-thousand dollars in gross revenues in only one year with Bagdadlian pocketing about 150-thousand of that.
The 41-year-old Montreal man pleaded guilty to the charges.
But during his sentencing hearing, Bagdadlian insisted it was all above board: registering the company, hiring workers, shipping his goods in a transparent fashion, filing tax returns, the whole nine yards.
His lawyer says his client believed it was a legit venture, wasn't doing anything under the radar and should not get jail time, but rather a community sentence.
- Article By Shuyee Lee, CJAD - Thursday, October 29 2009
nycKID
Last edited by a moderator:
T
theJointedOne
good luck rc. I hate how they talk about money when those PPOS (pure pieces of shit) on wall st. and in D.C. and all those corporate scums are reaping millions and billions bye stealing. And the Rx companies are even worse! All RC was doing was spreading love and they want to lock him up for 5. That is f'cked up. C'mon Canada!
great post nyc
great post nyc
NBtrichgrower
Member
Yeah, 5 yrs is a long time. In Canada he will do 1/6 before eligible for day parole, then he will have to spend another 1/6 th in a halfway house. Then he will have roughly 40 more months after that to answer weekly to a parole officer that can send you back in a heartbeat, its loads of fun. I am just finishing a 2 yr sentence for cultivation of 250 plants ,not one over 8 inches, 160 didnt even have a root yet. Anyway its all over for me in a couple weeks, the fear of random drug tests and being returned to prison for smoking weed is over , i say over , thank god
BEST OF LUCK RC
BEST OF LUCK RC
What a nightmare, best of luck man!
so was he sentenced?
- Status
