POT PLANTS FROM WALL TO WALL

Neighbours Wondered Why The Blinds Were Closed And No One Was Ever Home At
Several City Houses. They Found Out On Friday: Four Houses. 992 Marijuana
Plants. Street Value $1m.

The middle-aged woman never seemed to stay for more than an hour or two.

Neighbours wondered why no moving trucks ever came to fill the large house
with furniture, clothes and other such things.

Then there were the brown streaks on the white garage, and the brown and
yellow icicles hanging and crashing to the side of the house. Metal bars
were on almost every window and the blinds and drapes were almost always
closed.

People in the four-year-old subdivision were a little suspicious of the new
residents, but no one thought to phone police until the lights went out.

Two weeks of power troubles led Epcor workers to discover that someone was
stealing electricity from a line shared by four homes. On Thursday,
Edmonton and RCMP police swooped in on the house at 13418 32A St.,
arresting the middle-aged woman and busting up a marijuana-growing
operation which included 992 plants, $75,000 in equipment and four houses
worth about $700,000 in the city's north end.

"This house was sweating. I've never seen it so bad," Edmonton police Det.
Clayton Sach said of the home. "Even the dryer vents had icicles because
there was so much condensation. This house may have to be condemned."

Sach is with the Green Team, a four-member unit of Edmonton and RCMP
officers formed in 1998 in response to the increasing popularity of
hydroponic marijuana operations in Alberta.

The unit disabled 64 operations last year, seizing 11,700 plants worth an
estimated $11.7 million.

Thursday's bust was worth nearly $1 million, Sach said. Three of the four
houses were showing signs of condensation, brown streaks or icicles. Grow
houses draw on massive amounts of electricity to power high-voltage lamps
and maintain hothouse temperatures.

"This was bigger scale than we normally see," Sach said. "In terms of size,
we're really happy with this bust."

Police have charged two men and two women and expect to charge a fifth man
soon.

Nhan Le, 44, Bau Van Le, 47, Jade Le, 39, and Quay Din Mu, 47, face
numerous charges, including production of a controlled substance,
possession for the purpose of trafficking and theft of telecommunications.

The city's gang unit has been asked to look into the case to determine
whether the operation is connected to an organized-crime group.

The bust comes just days after Calgary police ambushed a semi-trailer
carrying a $66-million shipment of marijuana and cocaine destined for the
United States, and a week after a marijuana-grow operation was discovered
in seven townhomes in a cul-de-sac east of Calgary.

Police found about 2,000 marijuana plants and hydroponic growing equipment
worth $3 million.

The raid led investigators to three more houses and another $1.5 million
worth of drugs.

Police estimate at least 50,000 houses in Canada are being used exclusively
for growing pot.

They range from homes worth as much as $600,000 in downtown Vancouver to
middle-class houses in suburban neighbourhoods, such as the ones Edmonton
police raided Thursday.

In November, the problem prompted law-enforcement, hydro and real-estate
officials to band together to tell Ottawa the battle against
marijuana-growing operations is being lost.

In Canada, grow houses started as a West Coast phenomenon a decade ago.
They have since spread across the Prairies and Central Canada, and are
popping up in the Atlantic provinces.

Ninety-five per cent of the operations are run by criminal gangs, police
say. Most of the marijuana is smuggled into the U.S.

Sach did not know where marijuana from Thursday's bust was headed. The
basements of three of the homes -- the one on 32A Street and ones at 13811
128th Ave. and 15248 54th St. -- were filled wall-to-wall with pot plants.
The fourth house, a grand stucco home with a red-tiled roof near 124th
Avenue and 55th Street, is where two of the suspects have lived since 1989.

"They were always very nice to me," said a neighbour, who did not want her
name used.

"But they always kept their blinds closed, even in the basement."

Green Team investigators had been following one of the suspects, a
middle-aged woman, since Sunday. They even asked a resident on 32A Street
to keep an eye on her comings and goings. He kept a daily log until the arrest.

The other three suspects were arrested about 1 a.m. Friday at the 54th
Street address.

Police found one of the suspects in the basement, while the other two were
upstairs hanging drapes.

A neighbour said he got to take a peek inside the house at 32A Street.

He saw no furniture except some folding chairs and a cot. And containers of
fertilizer cluttered the kitchen.

"In a neighbourhood like this, who would think something like this would
happen," he said from his front porch.