Pubdate: Sun, 25 Sep 2016
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2016 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198
Author: Dane Schiller

FEDS: COLORADO'S NEW POT LAWS A HAVEN FOR TEXAS DRUG RUNNERS

Texas traffickers hide in plain sight in Colorado with its lax pot laws

Tien Nguyen, 35, is charged in Smith County, Texas with money
laundering after allegedly being stopped with $71,900 in cash in a
rental car on Interstate 20. Handout

Tien Nguyen, 35, is charged in Smith County, Texas with money...

Three packages were mailed one after another, each shipped from the
same Colorado post office to the same Houston business in the name of
the same fictitious person.

And each held 23 pounds of pricey, potent pot.

As Colorado is increasingly seen as the Napa Valley of cannabis,
authorities say they are squaring off against a new breed of drug
traffickers. They aren't part of Mexican cartels, aren't wielding
military-style rifles and many don't even have prior criminal records.

They are also establishing a new front in the drug war - not the Rio
Grande, but the Rocky Mountains.

They come from all over the United States and set up shop in Colorado
to hide in plain sight in a state where it is legal to smoke, possess,
and even have hundreds of plants in a home under some circumstances.
They mask themselves in a world of permissive new pot laws while
sneaking bulk loads of marijuana to states where it remains illegal.

Federal prosecutors earlier this month joined Colorado's attorney
general in going after one such alleged ring - a group of 30 people
accused of engaging in organized crime, tax evasion, money laundering
and racketeering More Information

By the numbers

2014: Year Colorado relaxed its laws to allow the legal sale of pot to
anyone 21 or older.

360: Seizures of marijuana headed out of Colorado in 2014 compared to
54 in 2006.

The case, which stretched from August 2014 to June, is believed to
mark the first time such charges have been filed alleging a Texas
conspiracy since Colorado two years ago further relaxed its laws to
allow the legal sale of pot to anyone 21 or older.

This came on the heels of a 2012 law regarding the use of medical
marijuana.

As the Denver Post informed its readers, "nowhere else in the world
has pot sales this legal, not even Amsterdam."

The emergence of such groups from out of state was among the concerns
of those who opposed Colorado changing its laws.

Barbra Roach, head of the Drug Enforcement Administration in Denver,
said there is a pattern of people moving to Colorado to get into the
illegal aspect of the pot business.

"They come from all over the United States," Roach said. "Some of them
come here and try to sell here, but almost always it is grown here and
it totally goes out of state."

Law enforcement made approximately 360 seizures of pot headed out of
Colorado in 2014 compared to 54 in 2006, according to a federal
report. Those 360 seizures included 36 different states as
destinations.

Marijuana has been found in bulk aboard outbound trains, planes, cars
trucks and often in the mail, as was the case over and over again with
the ring tied to Houston.

The three packages shipped to the fictitious person were just a slice
of business that was allegedly producing about 100 pounds of finished
product a month and ran as many as 20 grow houses.

Bank records, drug shipments and other elements in the case were
traced from Colorado to Houston, Pearland, Katy and other places,
according to court documents.

Wells Fargo surveillance cameras apparently captured images of the
groups' members making deposits in Colorado as well as Houston banks.

Houston ties

The group's suspected ring leader, Ton Le, 39, lived in Houston before
moving to Colorado and later Hawaii, where he allegedly sought to
expand the business by applying for legal permits to grow medical
marijuana there. He has one prior run-in with police, for a
misdemeanor. Tony Artis, an accused money man, also lived here. He's
been arrested several times and has a pending Harris County charge of
tampering with evidence.

Artis allegedly helped hide cash, part of a portfolio of profits
tucked away in banks, real estate and bogus businesses.

While investigating the alleged ring, authorities monitored phones,
hid cameras and enlisted a National Guard Blackhawk helicopter to fly
over suspected grow houses and measure their heat signatures, which
run far higher than residences.

Medical marijuana has been legal under Colorado law since 2012, and
legal for retail sales since January 2014. But there are an array of
stipulations, regarding how many plants a person can own and under
what circumstances, as well as where marijuana can be grown, carried
and smoked.

As marijuana is still considered illegal by the federal government,
even businesses that are properly licensed by the state to grow and
sell marijuana could be seen under federal law as instances of the
state enabling an organized crime operation.

Crime rings are known to work out of suburban homes openly turned into
greenhouses, but have also used national forest as their farmland,
according to authorities.

They seek to capitalize on what law enforcement officers around the
country say is a growing national demand for product from Colorado.

One puff of Colorado's finest hydroponic marijuana can be as
intoxicating as an entire joint from Mexico, long the origin of most
pot in Texas.

Colorado's attorney general is handling the ongoing criminal
prosecution.

The Department of Justice is attacking civilly by seizing bank
accounts, property in Colorado and Hawaii and other alleged proceeds
from crime.

Melissa Hamilton, a University of Houston Law Center scholar, said the
federal government clearly has an eye on Colorado.

"The feds still believe that marijuana is dangerous," she said, "so
interestingly, there is this kind of dancing around between federal
officials and state officials."

The federal government wants to ride herd over the drug war, and
Colorado wants to have its say over what happens in its state, she
said.

"Unless the feds at some point change their policy, they still seem to
be very interested in policing the drug war and marijuana at this
point," she said.

The DEA's Roach said that with changes in Colorado laws, her agents
have more marijuana smuggling rings than ever before, although DEA
numbers weren't immediately available.

"We only look for the largest, the most prolific organizations we can
find and work them up and on occasions work them down," she said. "The
problem is we keep stumbling into more and more marijuana cases …
because of the criminal organizations coming here."

Inside the operation

The Texas group allegedly produced about 100 pounds of finished
product per month, according to the investigation, which reaches back
to February 2015.

Acting on a tip, Colorado Police knocked on the door of a home that
was converted into a grow house and supposedly falsely operating as a
medical marijuana operation.

The men inside, Pete Pham and Michael Pham, were both from
Texas.

They let officers inside and claimed they were hired temporarily to
help cultivate the plants for medical patients in need, according to
court papers.

Authorities contend the medical paperwork was not only invalid, but
part of the scheme.

Just three days earlier, a state trooper in Smith County, in Northeast
Texas, pulled over Tien Nguyen, who was driving a Ford car on
Interstate 20. He had a Colorado driver license with a home address
that turned out to be that same stash house.

Nguyen, 35, was allegedly carrying $71,900 stashed in the glove
compartment as well as in a vacuum-sealed bag in the vehicle's hatch
back.

He was also allegedly carrying receipts for thousand of dollars in
goods purchased from a Way-To-Grow store in Colorado Springs as well
as electrical bills for several homes used as indoor marijuana farms.

He was charged in Smith County with money laundering,

Others charged in Texas include: Tuan Van Ho; De Ren Mei; David
Nguyen; Michael Pham; Peter Pham; Johnathan Phuc Hong Tieu; Linh Ngoc
Tran; Victor Leduke and Jeffery Yi. Some of the persons charged in the
alleged conspiracy are named in an indictment but have not yet been
arrested.

Vietnamese-American crime organizations have specialized in the
cultivation of high-potency marijuana in California and the groups are
seen as more insular and tougher for law enforcement to infiltrate
than other groups.

Several lawyers in the case declined requests to comment, including
those for Le, the alleged ring leader and Artis, the accused money man
and Nguyen, who was arrested with the cash in Texas.

Colorado Attorney General Cynthia Coffman, whose office is prosecuting
the case, has repeatedly criticized the state's pot laws.

"Illegal drug dealers are simply hiding in plain sight, attempting to
use the legalized market as a cover," she said.

Law enforcement goals

The Department of Justice has stated that among its goals is focusing
on preventing gangs and cartels from making money off marijuana and
stopping it from being smuggled to other states.

Jeff Dorschner, spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office in Denver,
said federal prosecutors seize assets in about 10 marijuana
conspiracies a year, with most of them drawn from state criminal
charge cases.

"We work in concert to tackle the illicit marijuana problem," he
said,

"There are more eyes now focused on marijuana then there were prior to
legalization, and that includes people who don't want a dispensary in
their neighborhood, by their school or where their kids play."

A 2016 report from the Houston High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area, a
federally funded coalition of law-enforcement agencies hugging the
Texas Gulf Coast, notes that as society's attitude toward marijuana
grows more lax, the drug is growing more potent.

Dean Becker, a contributing expert at Rice University's Baker
Institute, said the country is clearly turning a corner and will soon
look back on marijuana laws the way it looks back on Prohibition and
alcohol.

"These busts of hundreds of pounds do little if anything to discourage
others from reaping the enormous rewards of shipping weed interstate,"
said Becker, whose radio shows on the Drug Truth Network have long
advocated legalization. "In fact, these busts are needed to allow the
black market to justify the still-exorbitant prices."

The other harm, he said, is people continually pulled into the
criminal justice system.

"Hundreds of thousands of mostly youngsters will be arrested across
the U.S., then make bail, pay lawyers, pay fines and endure a lifelong
sentence of being a marijuana criminal," he said.
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