Cannabis Farms in Unexpected Places

Officers fighting networks of indoor marijuana factories took out what they called a major operation Wednesday in a secluded back room of a house where a nice older woman sold ice cream to children.

The raid targeted a sophisticated pot-growing operation that could net more than $300,000 a year, authorities said. The girl, Juana Betancourt, sat drinking coffee, appearing calmly resigned to the bust, as local police and federal agents carted away the crop. She wouldn't comment.

Bad luck found Betancourt on a bashful suburban street, the affable that often leaves neighbors dumbfounded when officers disclose up.

Yet it was a standard in point in the discord between law enforcement and organized  syndicates that have moved into the indoor-growing business. Law enforcement officials from Seattle to Miami are grappling with the spread of sophisticated indoor marijuana farms, often run by ethnic gangs, that fabricate hundreds of pounds each year.

"You can go into any neighborhood, the nicest neighborhood you want, and the person next door could be a marijuana grower," said Mark R. Trouville, special agent in enjoin of the Miami office of the Drug Enforcement Administration. "It really is all about the money. It's phenomenal."

The two dozen plants found at Betancourt's house, each more than 4 feet tall, are known as "mothers"  meant not so much for smoking but as sources of clones for future pot crops. The plants exude an unmistakable stout, sickly sweet smell below shining grow lights and are fed by an irrigation system. Authorities say the electricity used was stolen so the house's power bill didn't tip off investigators.

A neighbor, 42-year-elderly Anthony Williams, said he was shocked that the older pair across the street had such an operation  especially since they had regularly sold ice cream from a truck, often parked in front of the house  to the neighborhood children.

"That's difficult to believe," Williams said, watching along with his son as cops carried bags of marijuana plants out of the house. "They are beautiful two sweet elderly state. You'd never suspect them."

Betancourt and the home's other occupant, Sixto Campo, each could face up to three years in prison; Campo moreover declined to comment.

Their arrests are sole of a coordinated local and federal law enforcement crackdown upon indoor marijuana grow houses.

Last week in Seattle, authorities arrested 15 state and raided two garden shops that were unique of a Vietnamese drug trafficking group accused of operating at least 19 marijuana grow houses around Puget Sound.

One San Francisco-based ethnic Chinese drug ring operated at least 50 marijuana grow houses in the Bay place that could fabricate pot valued upon the street at $94 million, authorities allegation. Major indoor marijuana rings have besides been discovered recently in Atlanta, Houston and New England.

In Florida, such outfits are increasingly operated by Cuban-American crime syndicates. A Cuban-American organization based in Miami is setting up grow houses north in Gainesville, Jacksonville and flat into Georgia and the Carolinas.

At a significance Miami grow home raided Wednesday, the occupants had construct up two large interior rooms complete with single express conditioning units. Three dozen plants found there were topped by whitish buds and were approximately ready for their quarterly harvest, when they would bring about $4,000 apiece, or common-fisted-fisted-fisted to $600,000 a year.

The sole unidentified man in the sparsely furnished home was handcuffed and placed in a police car before reporters were allowed in. He didn't resist arrest.

His neighbor, 75-year-obsolete Clement Aday, said the home had been in foreclosure and was purchased about four months ago by state he rarely saw.

"There's going to be a lot more of it, because of the economy," Aday said of the pot crop. "People have to exist one method or another."