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Pounds of pot put on display

Valued at about $200,000, 668 marijuana plants are wrapped and displayed at a press conference.

By JONATHAN ABEL
Published November 10, 2006

BROOKSVILLE - A big drug bust got even bigger Thursday as authorities from Hernando, Citrus and Sumter counties revealed the stash they had taken from 10 grow houses.

There were 668 plants taken out in all, some in small growing cubes, others in five-foot stalks.

One hundred pounds of processed marijuana was wrapped in white paper and dumped on the Hernando Sheriff's Office floor for Thursday's press conference.

The sweet smell of marijuana permeated the room.

"This is the good stuff," said Hernando Sheriff Richard Nugent, referring to the hydroponic harvest.

"This is not some college kid growing marijuana in his room," added Ray Velboom, an FDLE agent.

Ten houses were raided Tuesday and Wednesday: four in Hernando, five in Citrus and one in Sumter. There were more than a dozen arrests in "Operation Home Grown."

According to authorities, the growing operation started in late 2004 and involved a network of Cubans, based in Miami.

They rented out nondescript houses, gutted them, and replaced their innards with hundreds of potted pot plants, intense light fixtures and endless amounts of insulation.

The drugs were grown locally and shipped to Miami for distribution. Each house could generate $300,000 to $500,000 a year.

Nugent said this was the fifth large-scale growing ring to be busted in Florida and easily the biggest one in Hernando County in recent memory.

"Couple it with growing operations in other counties and it's huge," he said.

The first tip about the ring came in late 2004, but it wasn't until the spring of this year that the Hernando Sheriff's Office had enough information to act.

It quickly became obvious the ring wasn't confined to Hernando, so detectives in Citrus and Sumter were notified, as were agents at the Florida Department of Law Enforcement and the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The houses were raided this week because of some information - which turned out to be false - saying the growers were dismantling their operation.

Each house also stole tens of thousands of dollars in electricity by diverting the power before it went to the meter.

On Wednesday, as masked vice detectives pulled plants and equipment out of one house at 7441 Blackbird Ave., neighbor Ed Lewandowski, 39, said this wasn't surprising.

There was always something suspicious about the neighbors who moved in at 3 a.m. and did lots of late-night construction.

But they never caused any trouble here on quiet Blackbird Avenue except for the noise.

"The only thing that bothered all of us was that transformer buzzing all night," he said.

Jonathan Abel can be reached at jabel@sptimes.com or 352 754-6114.

[Last modified November 9, 2006, 22:54:43]