DEPUTIES, DEA SHUT MEDICAL POT SHOP

Weapons, Plants Seized; Owner With Felony Record Is Arrested

A medical marijuana dispensary owner - who did prison time for embezzling
$5 million while a state employee - was arrested Thursday on suspicion of
operating his shop without a legal business license and of illegal weapons
possession. Sacramento County sheriff's deputies shut down Alternative
Specialties and arrested Louis Wayne Fowler after searching his Folsom
Boulevard shop and his Rio Linda home, as well as his parents' and his
sister's homes, said Sgt. R.L. Davis, sheriff's spokesman.

Financial documents relating to the shop were seized, along with a
semiautomatic pistol and an illegal fully automatic assault weapon that
officers found in Fowler's car, Davis said. Fowler's felony record makes it
illegal for him to possess any weapons.

Sheriff's deputies also alerted the federal Drug Enforcement
Administration, which raided the shop Thursday night. Five DEA agents
carried out three boxes marked "DEA evidence" and removed hundreds of
marijuana plants. Fowler, who served seven years in state prison for
embezzling $5 million from the state in the early 1980s while he was an
entry-level accountant, opened the shop last August.

His application for a business license had been denied and county code
enforcement officials considered his operation to be an illegal one, said
Craig Moyle, a spokesman for Sacramento County's Municipal Services Agency.

Investigators from the District Attorney's Office and the Sheriff's
Department also had been looking into the legality of Fowler's business and
whether he had been properly reporting income to government agencies, Davis
said.

"Because of who he is and because he was definitely operating without a
business license, they served the search warrants," Davis said.

The homes of Fowler's family members were searched because investigators
believed financial documents relating to the shop were kept there, Davis said.

Fowler's mother, Linda M. Fowler, is president of the North Sacramento
Unified School District board. Neither she nor her husband, Glen, could be
reached for comment Thursday night.

Fowler's sister, Mary Jennifer Berg, worked in her brother's shop and has
been trying to open a medical marijuana dispensary in Citrus Heights.

For much of Thursday, several sheriff's deputies camped out inside the shop
- - where dozens of marijuana plants were in plain view through large windows
- - as patients arrived to find the dispensary had been closed.

"It's certainly a setback for people who rely on this dispensary," said
33-year-old Brian Sorgatz, who said he buys marijuana to help control
symptoms related to his attention deficit disorder. "This seems like
selective law enforcement to me ... using the business license issue as a
pretext to raid this dispensary. They do know that they are thwarting the
will of the people of California."

In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 215, called the
Compassionate Use Act, permitting patients with a doctor's recommendation
to use marijuana. But the conflict between California and federal law -
which bans marijuana use for any purpose - has made operating medical
marijuana dispensaries precarious as federal drug agents have raided such
operations.

Fowler, who is one of four owners of medicinal marijuana dispensaries in
Sacramento County, also is the most high-profile, and some activists say
his outspokenness may have drawn extra attention to his operation.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that California's law
legalizing medicinal marijuana would not protect users from being arrested
by federal law enforcement authorities, Fowler welcomed reporters and
cameras into his shop. He was the only local dispensary owner willing to
speak publicly.

"I hope that people don't judge us from their impression of one facility,"
said Ryan Landers, California director of the American Alliance for Medical
Cannabis. "I hope that this doesn't set a precedent for what will happen in
the community. It's far safer for patients to get their medicine through
dispensaries than to buy it on the street."

Three other medical marijuana dispensaries operate in Sacramento County,
even though county officials imposed a moratorium on such shops last fall.
Those dispensaries, Moyle said, are allowed to operate because they
properly filed appeals after their business licenses were denied. Fowler,
however, had not filed an appeal, Moyle said.

Fowler, who remained in the Sacramento County jail Thursday night on a
no-bail hold, earned notoriety in 1989 when state law enforcement officials
arrested him for pulling off what authorities at the time called
California's largest theft of public funds.

As an entry-level accountant for the State Water Resources Control Board
from 1982 to 1985, Fowler set up a phony water treatment plant, forged a
state contract and funneled $5.1 million in taxpayer money to the
nonexistent business. His scheme went undetected until authorities were
tipped off in 1988, three years after Fowler had left the agency and moved
to Arizona, where he was using the name of William David Rise, a Sacramento
man who had been accidentally electrocuted.

Most of the money was never recovered. Fowler's father, Glen, also was
implicated in the embezzlement case and pleaded no contest to three counts
of money laundering.