MCCLEARY, Wash. — Dozens of people were arrested and hundreds of marijuana plants were seized in what Grays Harbor County investigators are calling an international drug ring funded by Chinese organized crime.
Officers formed a line to load marijuana plants that had been taken from inside a home in McCleary onto a truck. The home was ust one of the locations targeted in a series of raids conducted early Tuesday morning.
“They have been looking at them for quite a while,” said Joy Thayer, who lives a short distance from the home. Thayer said she and other neighbors suspected something illegal was going on down the dead-end road after the home was sold a few years ago.
“Oh yeah, you can smell it. Can’t you smell it in the air? So we figured it out,” Thayer said.
The seized plants are part of what Grays Harbor Drug Task Force investigators say is a major internationally based and funded operation using homes and outbuildings in the county and converting them into indoor pot farms. All of the properties were purchased with cash and all the buyers came to the U.S. from China.
“This is an organized crime we're dealing with here,” said Grays Harbor Sheriff’s Office Chief Criminal Deputy Steve Schumate. “It was Chinese nationals that funded it and were operating these grow houses.” Schumate said funds from the grows were used to finance criminal enterprises.
Thirty warrants were served and 40 or more people were arrested. Most of the arrests were made in Grays Harbor County, with others in King and Thurston counties, according to Schumate.
Similar operations have been uncovered in California and Colorado, where, as in Washington, marijuana is legal.
“So, often times, they try to go within states where the manufacture of marijuana is legal, but try and be in the shadows, if you will,” Schumate said.
Cox Media Group
