pixabay / Brent Barnett
The Lake County Sheriff’s Office in Florida is calling this the largest marijuana bust in the county’s history. They were investigating a tip when they encountered the heavy smell of marijuana, what they found next was straight up wild.
After making contact with the 79-year-old man on the property, a detail of this story that’s really tripping me out. Like, why is this almost-80-year-old guy running a MASSIVE grow operation?! Anyway, after speaking with him the cops secured a search warrant the officers found millions of dollars worth of cannabis and they discovered the illegal grow operation was stealing enough electricity to power a small town.
Lake County, Florida is part of the greater Orlando area in case you were wondering where exactly this all happened. According to ClickOrlando, Utilities Services responded to this scene after it was discovered the illegal grow operation was stealing electricity. What they found was this grow house was literally hijacking enough juice to power up an entire town. Their words, not mine.
Utility services personnel responded to the scene and discovered that enough power was being stolen to power a small town, and estimated the dollar amount of stolen utility resources to be in the millions.
“Detectives worked diligently to dismantle the operation, which resulted in the seizure of over 300 pounds of processed marijuana, large quantities of cannabis concentrates, two firearms, cultivation equipment, and 767 large marijuana plants,” a spokesperson said in a news release. “The street value of the marijuana seized is estimated to be approximately $2.3 million.”
Jail records show Orozco-Montoya was taken into custody by Lake County deputies and charged with cultivating marijuana, possession of cannabis concentrates, grand theft, trafficking in marijuana, possession of drug paraphernalia and possession of a place for manufacturing a controlled substance. (via ClickOrlando)
That’s just an insane amount of marijuana to be found out in the middle of nowhere, all on a farm siphoning off illegal energy from the county.
How could this possibly have gone on for so long without anyone at Utilities realizing what was happening when they’re able to detect even the slightest uptick in power usage from someone like you or me?
The estimated value of the seized marijuana is $2.3 million but it’s unclear how exactly they’re calculating that value these days given the wide range in prices across the nation and the prevalence of legalized marijuana from coast to coast.
To read more about this historic bust, you can click here.