POLITICS Feds Raid Illegal California Grow Houses Run by Chinese Mob

California is now home to the largest legal state-regulated cannabis marketplace on the planet. But massive federal raids near Sacramento this week are serving as a reminder that the state is still home to an enormous unlicensed and unregulated market, too.

On April 3 and 4, hundreds of federal agents and local law enforcement officers descended on 74 houses in the Sacramento region, and filed civil forfeiture actions against more than 100 properties, in what’s being characterized as one of the largest residential forfeiture efforts in the nation’s history.

According to the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of California, this week’s raids and arrests targeted a vast and meticulously organized black market cannabis network.

According to authorities, that network involved millions of dollars in suspicious money transfers from China, large purchases of California real estate and the gutting hundreds of homes in quiet suburban or rural neighborhoods for use as secretive cultivation rooms. Ultimately, authorities say, the scheme shipped huge quantities of cannabis far from California’s regulated market to illicit distributors on the East Coast, where cannabis remains largely illegal.

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