DOJ said the defendants allegedly smuggled Chinese nationals to work in suburban grow houses, producing and distributing bulk marijuana.
Seven Chinese nationals were charged on July 8 for allegedly running a multi-million-dollar marijuana trafficking network in the suburban neighborhoods of Massachusetts and Maine, according to the Department of Justice (DOJ).
Prosecutors alleged that the defendants turned single-family properties in Massachusetts and Maine into covert interconnected grow houses for cultivating and distributing “kilogram-sized quantities” of marijuana in bulk, which started in January 2020, according to a DOJ statement.
All but one defendant—Yanrong Zhu, 47, of Greenfield Massachusetts, and Brooklyn, New York, who remains at large—have been arrested. Those arrested are Jianxiong Chen, Yuxiong Wu, Dinghui Li, Dechao Ma, Peng Lian Zhu, and Hongbin Wu, all aged between 35 and 39.
The individuals allegedly coordinated through the so-called “East Coast Contact List” of marijuana cultivators and distributors, which includes people with ties to China.
Prosecutors alleged that the defendants used earnings from the marijuana sales to purchase luxury homes, automobiles, jewelry, and real estate in Massachusetts to further expand their criminal enterprise.
They also allegedly conducted “bulk cash transactions” with co-conspirators in the Eastern District of New York, according to the statement.
Chen, one of the arrested suspects, was accused of smuggling illegal Chinese immigrants into the country and withholding their passports to force them to work in the grow houses until their smuggling debts were paid off.
DOJ stated that law enforcement officers discovered more than $270,000 in cash, several Chinese passports, and other identification documents during a search of his house in Braintree, Massachusetts, last year.
In June 2023, authorities seized $36,900 in cash after stopping Wu and Zhu as they left a grow house in Greenfield, Massachusetts.
Law enforcement also seized over 109 kilograms of marijuana, nearly $200,000 in cash, and a gold Rolex watch still bearing its $65,000 price tag during 2024 searches of grow houses in Braintree and Melrose, where Ma and Zhu resided, respectively.
“This case pulls back the curtain on a sprawling criminal enterprise that exploited our immigration system and our communities for personal gain,” U.S. attorney Leah B. Foley said in the statement.
“These defendants allegedly turned quiet homes across the Northeast into hubs for a criminal enterprise – building a multi-million-dollar black-market operation off the backs of an illegal workforce and using our neighborhoods as cover. That ends today,” Foley added.
