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Police seized more than 1,000 marijuana plants during three raids across Somerset County over the past several days.
On March 18, Somerset County sheriff’s deputies raided a Perkins Street home in Norridgewock. That was followed by a pair of raids on Monday targeting homes on Thurston Hill Road in Madison and Upper Main Street in Norridgewock, according to the Waterville Morning Sentinel.
As a result of the raids, deputies seized more than 1,000 marijuana plants, more than 30 pounds of processed marijuana and other drug material, the Sentinel reported.
Jiamin Lao, 29, was charged with illegal cultivation of marijuana and drug trafficking in connection with the Monday raids. Lao was taken to the Somerset County Jail in East Madison, where she was released on $10,000 bail, according to the newspaper.
No one was arrested during the raid of the Perkins Street property, which was registered to an owner in New York, the Sentinel reported.
They are just the latest large-scale illegal marijuana operations uncovered in Maine in recent months.
Since the beginning of the new year, police have been active in busting these large operations, which have been found all over rural Maine, from Guilford and Sangerville in Piscataquis County, to Corinna and Passadumkeag in Penobscot County, to Turner in Androscoggin County, to Cornville, to Madison, to Mercer, to Norridgewock, to Skowhegan in Somerset County, to Belgrade, China and Chelsea in Kennebec County, to Jefferson and Whitefield in Lincoln County.
These operations received greater scrutiny after the Penobscot County Sheriff’s Office found an illegal marijuana grow house in Carmel, where police seized 3,400 plants and 111 pounds of processed marijuana in late June. As 2023 dragged on, police uncovered other large illegal marijuana operations in Dexter, Wilton, Machias and other communities.
A leaked federal government memo, first obtained by the conservative Daily Caller and published in August, estimates Maine has 270 large-scale illegal marijuana grows connected to organized crime groups in China. The memo’s authors note that the money may be used to further crime in the U.S. or be sent back to China. These operations generate an estimated $4.37 billion in revenue.
Similar operations have been found in California, Oklahoma and Oregon.
Maine’s congressional delegation has twice pressed the U.S. Justice Department to crack down on these illegal marijuana operations, most recently on Jan. 25, 2024.
“We applaud Maine law enforcement for their continued efforts to investigate and shutdown these illegal operations, and we encourage the Department of Justice (DOJ) and other federal partners to provide additional support for these efforts. These illegal growing operations are detrimental to Maine businesses that comply with State laws, and we urge the DOJ to shut them down,” U.S. Sens. Susan Collins and Angus King and U.S. Reps. Chellie Pingree and Jared Golden said in their January letter to Attorney General Merrick Garland.
It’s not yet clear whether the operations uncovered in these latest raids are connected to others uncovered across Maine or to the crime network described in the federal memo.
