POLICE SEIZE 15 HOMES, $10M IN MARIJUANA

Codiac RCMP Nab 5,000 'High End' Plants From High-End
Neighbourhoods

In ritzy Royal Oaks Estates the houses are "high-end,' and so is the
marijuana, say the RCMP.

Thirteen suspects whom police described only as "being of Vietnamese
descent" are expected to appear in Moncton provincial court today on
charges connected to a months-long RCMP investigation that climaxed in
dramatic fashion yesterday.

Police seized more than 5,000 plants of "high-end marijuana," said
RCMP "J' Division media relations officer Sgt. Gary Cameron, meaning
expensive, highly concentrated pot destined for markets outside the
province with a potential "street value' exceeding $10 million.

All told, yesterday's noon-hour raid swooped down on 15 homes in the
metropolitan area.

One, at 16 Fraser St. in Moncton, is described as "the nest," where
marijuana "farmers' - apparently also sophisticated technicians adept
at stealing electricity and concealing their multi-million-dollar
crimes - slept and ate between rounds of cultivating basement plots in
the other 14 scattered widely over the city and its fringes.

Perhaps surprisingly to many citizens, four of those homes are in
Royal Oaks Estates on the northern outskirts of the city, where a
luxury golf course and state-of-the-art amenities compete for
attention with some of the most expensive homes in metro.

But not everyone is entirely surprised, according to Royal Oaks
resident Mike Arsenault, who lives next door to No. 54 Kervin Cr.

Arsenault's mysterious "neighbours' occupied a $300,000 luxury home
with glowing hardwood floors, expansive windows, a lovely kitchen area
and 1,000 pot plants in the basement.

They were growing under a canopy of 50 enormous, 400-watt 'grow-bulbs'
- - like 50 miniature suns that police estimate would consume about $500
worth of electricity in a single month.

"We all thought something very strange was going on there," says
Arsenault of the people he believes bought the house about a year ago.

No one knew for sure exactly when, because they kept such a low
profile, but there was enough strangeness about them - all

people who appeared to be in their 20s or 30s and all of Asian
extraction that they were at times the talk of the
neighbourhood.

"Everybody said the same thing; that there's something very, very
weird about it with all the coming and going, a bunch of young guys,
blinds closed all the time, year-round. I'd be out blowing snow in the
winter and you'd wave and they'd just look straight ahead like they
had blinders on."

There were other clues, added Arsenault two large ventilators are
installed on the roof at the back, facing the golf course's No. 6
hole, and a huge Lennox heat exchanger on the side of the house facing
his looks to be twice the size that would be required for a home that
size.

No one thought to call the police.

"Nobody likes to get involved in someone else's affairs," said
Arsenault, although it's possible someone eventually did through the
crimestoppers number. He noted that an RCMP officer moved into the
neighbourhood a couple of doors down just three weeks ago.

In any event Arsenault was at a relative's house yesterday when his
daughter called to say there were "a bunch of guys in white suits
running around outside" and obviously, something was up.

To see all the police there yesterday and to finally have it brought
home what was going on was "pretty scary."

You could understand how suspicion would not give way to alarm, given
the neighbourhood.

As police gave journalists a tour of No. 54 Kervin yesterday, a
foursome was cheerfully sinking their putts at Hole No. 6 separated
from the house by no more than a hundred feet - paved bicycle path, a
sandtrap and the green. Police and reporters were invisible and the
golfers had no clue what was going on.

Officers inside the home told reporters the occupants had cut a hole
right through the concrete foundation, located the underground power
cable and hooked their own transformer to it so they could rob NB
Power to run their grow lights.

Power theft is, in fact, hard to detect, said Eugene Giroux, NB
Power's manager of operations for eastern New Brunswick.

The cops called Giroux in to cut the power before they moved in, given
the enormous amount of electricity in use, the potential for
short-outs in homemade circuitry and the vats of potentially volatile
fertilizer and other chemicals in the home.

"We have instruments that will measure the amount of electricity being
diverted, but unless we get a tip we won't know to use the
instruments."

A certain amount of power is lost from the system throughout the year
for various reasons and can't be pinpointed to individual thieves
until someone alerts the authorities, he said.

Cameron said the majority of the houses seized by police in
yesterday's raid are at the high end of the scale. Use of high-end
homes for marijuana cultivation is relatively new here but there are
sound reasons for using them, said the veteran officer.

"People just don't think anything wrong would be going on in homes
like these. But they clearly show what kind of money these people have
available to them."

Sgt. Rick Daigle of 'J' Division's commercial crimes section said the
15 homes have been officially seized and are in RCMP hands, likely
until judicial process is completed in the case. Whether or not all 13
arrested yesterday are convicted, the homes were clearly being used
for illegal purposes and they will likely be forfeited to the Crown,
the proceeds turned back to government.

Today's scheduled appearances are for 13 suspects - 12 male and one
female.

Where they come from has not been disclosed and at this point may not
even be known, although federal immigration authorities and police in
Hamilton, Ont., are assisting in the investigation, Cameron said.