{"id":92379,"date":"2019-10-02T00:33:22","date_gmt":"2019-10-02T00:33:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/sentencing-phase-of-statewide-pot-busts-begins\/"},"modified":"2019-10-02T00:33:22","modified_gmt":"2019-10-02T00:33:22","slug":"sentencing-phase-of-statewide-pot-busts-begins","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/sentencing-phase-of-statewide-pot-busts-begins\/","title":{"rendered":"Sentencing phase of statewide pot busts begins"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\"Drug
Drug Enforcement Agency agents last year raid a marijuana farm on County Road 22 north of Cortez that was part of a statewide operation.<\/span>Jim Mimiaga\/The Journal<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p>

The sentencing phase of a wide-reaching illegal marijuana farm and distribution network that included operations in Montezuma County has begun.<\/p>\n

From Rifle to Grand Junction and Cortez to Denver, illegal farms and distribution networks were allegedly established by a group of Chinese nationals, according to the Drug Enforcement Agency, U.S. attorneys, and state and local law enforcement.<\/p>\n

Dozens of arrests have been made in the case, including in Montezuma County, where several illegal marijuana farms were raided in August of 2018.<\/p>\n

The investigation showed they were linked to similar operations in Rifle and Grand Junction that also were raided as part of an investigation dating to 2016.<\/p>\n

On Sept. 30, Long Luong, aka \u201cPeter,\u201d of Grand Junction, was sentenced to seven years for his role in the illegal marijuana operation that reportedly was linked the raided pot farms in Montezuma County.<\/p>\n

The sentence, handed down Sept. 30 by Senior U.S. District Court Judge Marcia S. Krieger, includes five years\u2019 supervised release and a $30,000 fine.<\/p>\n

According to a U.S. Attorney\u2019 Office press release, Luong\u2019s co-defendants, Heung Yu Wong and Guoying Tang, organized cultivation and harvest of a large field of marijuana in Southwest Colorado.<\/p>\n

Luong, while supervising at least five others, harvested the field and loaded it onto two large trucks, according to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office.<\/p>\n

On Sept. 23, 2017, one of the two trucks was intercepted by law enforcement and discovered to contain a significant quantity of freshly harvested marijuana that would result in at least 50 kilograms of usable marijuana, according to court records.<\/p>\n

The truck was destined for a warehouse in Grand Junction, where Luong and others supervised the cultivation of an additional 1,034 marijuana plants and the processing for later distribution.<\/p>\n

A search of Luong\u2019s home in Grand Junction revealed 179 marijuana plants being grown for further illegal distribution, prosecutors said. A Beretta 9 mm handgun owned by Luong was found hidden in a hamper.<\/p>\n

\u201cLong Luong ran a massive illegal marijuana grow operation that flagrantly and grossly violated both federal and state law,\u201d said Acting DEA Special Agent in Charge Deanne Reuter. \u201cThe DEA will continue to target these large illegal grow operations that seek profit over the public well-being.\u201d<\/p>\n

Tang was sentenced on April 2 to 24 months imprisonment followed by three years of supervised release for her role in the illegal operation, according to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s office in Denver. Heung Yu Wong entered a guilty plea on June 24, and is scheduled for sentencing Feb. 3, 2020.<\/p>\n

This case was investigated by the DEA, with substantial assistance from Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, Two Rivers Drug Enforcement Team, Western Colorado Drug Task Force, Garfield County Sheriff\u2019s Office, Mesa County Sheriff\u2019s Office, and Grand Junction Police Department. The defendant was prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Jeremy Chaffin in the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Grand Junction office.<\/p>\n

In Montezuma County, the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office seeks to obtain and sell three properties connected to raids last year. One of the four defendants has been offered a plea deal in exchange for cooperating in the case against other suspects.<\/p>\n

Jimmy Dang, Qi Lin Wu, Lisa Yang, and Sang Teng were indicted in October 2018 and charged with manufacturing, possessing and intending to distribute 1,000 or more marijuana plants, according to the U.S. Attorney\u2019s Office. All four initially pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n

In August, Yang pleaded guilty to a single charge of conspiracy to distribute 100 or more marijuana plants. She has agreed to cooperate in the case against other defendants and will receive a recommendation for a reduced sentence, according to the plea deal.<\/p>\n

Teng has requested a change of plea hearing. Dang and Wu were scheduled for a trial in August, but it was continued to Oct. 7 to allow time for Chinese language translators to be scheduled for the proceedings.<\/p>\n

jmimiaga@the-journal.com<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

supervised harvest gets 7 years<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":92380,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5738,5796,6054,5740,5737,5736,5762,5735,5741],"tags":[21,168,969,13,28,60,29],"naviga_topic":[],"class_list":["post-92379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-cortez","category-crime","category-drug-trafficking","category-frontpage-lead","category-headlines","category-local-news","category-montezuma-county","category-news","category-newsletter","tag-cortez","tag-crime","tag-drug-trafficking","tag-frontpage-lead","tag-headlines","tag-montezuma-county","tag-newsletter"],"acf":[],"author_name":"dh_admin","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92379","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=92379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/92379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/92380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=92379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=92379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=92379"},{"taxonomy":"naviga_topic","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/dh.durangoherald.com\/tj\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/naviga_topic?post=92379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}