How Bees Revealed a Pot Farm Beneath the Maraschino Cherries

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/03/03/how-bees-revealed-a-pot-farm-beneath-the-maraschino-cherries.html

by mukyu • 11 years ago

44 54 11 years ago

But the bees didn't reveal the cannabis farm. The Brooklyn DA used the bee incident as a pretext to search the farm and plant twice, while accompanying another agency, and used a third-hand 6-year-old tip to find where a hidden staircase was.

And the rest of this story is so tragic.

j_m_b• 11 years ago

Exactly. The bees were just a ruse for them to raid the factory. Tragic ending indeed.

thaumasiotes4• 11 years ago

The bees weren't just a ruse for them to raid the factory. They investigated him for illegal runoff based on speculation in the New York Times that that was how the bees were turning red, even though the cause of the red bees had already been determined to be something else.

Usually, when you have a pretext to do something, at least the pretextual reason is, you know, true.

mc323• 11 years ago

What I don't get is he had a very successful cocktail cherry business. So he didn't need to run a million dollar illegal business which was a tiny fraction of the legal business.

ics• 11 years ago

$20 million cherry business, $XX million cannabis business according to the article.

logfromblammo4• 11 years ago

Some of the profits from the cherry business may have actually been laundered money from the cannabis business. The cherry business might not have been "very successful" on its own.

Besides that, the larger legit business provided a great cover for the smaller illegal business. He didn't need to run the grow op to run the cherry factory, but he did need the cherry factory to run the grow op more easily. There's no way he could have run it undetected for at least six years in the heart of NYC without the cherries on top.

I suspect that the cops had access to illegally obtained evidence, and the bee thing was the only way they had to legitimize what they already knew.

DarkTree2• 11 years ago

Every time an event like this happens, or kidnapped victims are revealed being hidden in a house for the past 15 years, or a previously unknown serial-killer is finally caught, it makes me wonder how many of these events are still carrying on unnoticed.

hlfw0rd3• 11 years ago

How do you relate cannabis plants with serial killers?

DarkTree2• 11 years ago

I wasn't intentionally equating all of those scenarios. The only relation that they have is that they are hidden from society and illegal. The point I was trying to make is that if large operations like this are taking place behind the curtains of society, surely there are more that will eventually be revealed (or never at all) in the future.

DanBC• 11 years ago

Modern slaves who are trapped in homes and forced to farm cannabis is a thing in England, so that's probably more common than you think over here.

Here's an article from 2008. http://www.newstatesman.com/law-and-reform/2008/11/cannabis-...

And another from 2015. http://mobile.reuters.com/article/idUSKBN0LU00P20150226

hlfw0rd3• 11 years ago

I stand corrected. Wow..

jessaustin2• 11 years ago

Apparently prosecutors are more eager to prosecute slavery victims than actual slavers! How I wish I weren't surprised, but if they can stomach sending people to prison for growing pot, it's not such a step to sending people to prison for being forced to grow pot.

citruspi• 11 years ago

Non-mobile link for the Reuters article - http://www.reuters.com/article/2015/02/26/us-britain-slavery...

rwmj• 11 years ago

How close to being legalized is pot in New York?

hlfw0rd3• 11 years ago

New York legalized cannabis for medical purposes in July of 2014. You should see dispensaries opening in January of 2016 (18 month implementation plan).

http://nypost.com/2014/07/07/ny-becomes-23rd-state-to-allow-...

cthalupa2• 11 years ago

I'm glad we're spending so many resources and so much time to find people growing pot in the US. It's time well spent to battle the stoner scourge, and people growing it domestically represent a much higher risk than dealing with drug dealers in Mexico.

It's a bonus that we got this menace to society to commit suicide when confronted, too. He might have tried to fool us with his having a family, and working with the beekeepers to resolve the problem preventing them from producing honey, but the man even did cocaine. The streets are safer with him off of them.

edit: yes, satire.

sliverstorm• 11 years ago

I agree there are busts that seem pointless, but there are also busts that make sense. I'm in favor of busting the armed narcos growing on public lands.

jessaustin2• 11 years ago

Yes all public employees associated with this event should be very proud, that they saved the public from a factory owner who had paid hundreds of employees a living wage, for decades. We're better off without that sort!

nosuchthing• 11 years ago

If you're vying for satire, it's not immediately obvious. :(

  Poe's law is an Internet adage which states that, without a 
  clear indicator of the author's intent, parodies of extreme 
  views will, to some readers, be indistinguishable from 
  sincere expressions of the parodied views.

logfromblammo4• 11 years ago

Once again, I'll endorse the use of the tilde ('~') as a punctuation mark to indicate sarcasm or satire. To use it, replace the end punctuation of a single sentence with the tilde, or wrap an entire block of text in two of them, like quotation marks.

~It's so very difficult to use.~

Fortunately, the previous post is written such that a Poe's Law check would probably confirm my suspicion of satire.

thaumasiotes4• 11 years ago

This is a terrible idea, given the existing use of a tilde at the end of a sentence to indicate general positive sentiment:

"I loved the present! Thank you~~"

Nadya• 11 years ago

The proper way in the U.K to denote sarcasm is to use (!) at the end of a sentence. This is done by U.K broadcast subtitles.

For example, watch Dr. Who with subtitles on. You'll see (!) used a lot. :)

The Japanese do use it for sarcasm though I'm not sure how common this is, I've never encountered it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tilde#Japanese

It's more common to see "へ～～～" as opposed to "へーーー” (read: "heeeee" in a surprised manner with rising intonation on the e's)

The holding and rising tone makes it also used for happiness and excitement. It's "cutesy" (childlike) because of the held sound.

So ありがとう can become ありがとう～～ (the う is held at the end) which in English would be similar to saying "thank youuuuuuuu!!!"

Instead of "youuuuuuuu" it's been borrowed by some English speakers to replace repeating consonants: "Thank you~"

dandare• 11 years ago

How is this hacker news?

darkstar999• 11 years ago

Straight from the HN guidelines:

"On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes more than hacking and startups. If you had to reduce it to a sentence, the answer might be: anything that gratifies one's intellectual curiosity."

I found this interesting, therefore it is on topic.

tomlongson• 11 years ago

I also found it interesting, but was disappointed that the "link" was just a reason to avoid needing a search warrant.

If the plants were the reason the bees were coming to the factory, that would be more interesting.

x5n12• 11 years ago

It's crazy how obsessed these people are. They would not let up. And for what?

chrisgd• 11 years ago

Even more tragic considering the recent ruling about drug dogs. Police officer handling K-9, wants to please DA who wants to search so he does something that alerts the dog to please him?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-watch/wp/2015/08/04/...

zbyte64• 11 years ago

The guy employed parolees so they wouldn't turn to crime and he himself didn't have a criminal record. Sad he took his life.

nathanm412• 11 years ago

It now seems more likely that he turned to parolees because he knew he could control them better and they probably already knew the business.

faster• 11 years ago

It's fairly clear in the article that the parolees were not working on the grow side.

"One investigator said Mondella’s employees were likely unaware of the doings in that stealth basement. These employees include parolees that Mondella was known to hire from the nearby housing project, giving them a chance to not let a crime define their lives."

anon3_• 11 years ago

Related (police pretexting):

http://cryptome.org/police-pretext1.pdf

http://cryptome.org/police-pretext2.pdf

trhway• 11 years ago

among the big themes in this tragic story, a minor gem :

"Cote went on, “Beekeepers (particularly the hipster versions) in Brooklyn sometimes (often?) lead a myopic sort of existence wherein only their world view, or their set of needs, is valid or important.”"

while it may seem only hipster related, one can see how DA/LE behavior in this story pretty much lends itself to the same "myopic" description. And in general it is among the main characteristics of our species.

thaumasiotes4• 11 years ago

So...

1. Bees start to turn red, causing people to think of the maraschino cherry factory. They're tested and found to be carrying red die #40.

2. The cherry grower looks for help with all the bees coming into his factory.

3. The New York Times runs an article implying that the bees are red because they're harvesting factory runoff.

4. The bees are found to be harvesting from vats of cherries in transit within the factory. Those vats are sealed, and the red bee problem is no more.

5. The Brooklyn DA's Office notices the Times coverage. They've investigated the factory owner for marijuana production already, but failed to find anything they could stick him with. They suggest to the Department of Environmental Conservation that this merits an official check of the factory for illegal syrup runoff.

6. The DEC checks for illegal runoff, and also for marijuana. They find neither.

7. A new DA is elected and decides to drop unresolved cases. This prompts the Office to try one last time to get the cherry factory guy.

8. Although it is now definitively established that there was no illegal runoff and the bees were feeding on in-production vats (which they're not doing any more), the DA's Office gets the DEC to investigate the factory once again for, you guessed it, illegal syrup runoff. They justify this based on the old news coverage.

9. The DEC finds no illegal runoff. They do find marijuana this time, though.

Truly, a high point in good governance. How exactly can the DEC investigate this guy for a problem that (a) it's already investigated and found no evidence of, and (b) is supported only by a theory that is already known to be false? :/

monochromatic• 11 years ago

You have to think that were it not for the instantly accessible gun in an ankle holster, the moment of panic and perhaps shame might have just passed. He might even now be producing cherries with the method that became prevalent after Prohibition made alcohol as illegal as pot has been.

Of course the anti-gun Daily Beast couldn't go an entire article without blaming a gun for something a person decided to do.

enraged_camel2• 11 years ago

I downvoted you. Please don't derail this topic and turn it into a gun debate. Thanks.

edit: never mind. judging by the downvotes, I guess people really enjoy their endless gun debates!

peterwwillis2• 11 years ago

You don't need to comment on why you downvoted.

zabcik• 11 years ago

The point of having threaded comments is to allow new discussion to happen. I'm sure other top level comments won't be a gun debate; even better if you add your own thoughts. Only downvote things if they do not contribute to discussion whatsoever.

starshadowx2• 11 years ago

Regardless of being anti or pro-gun, they are completely right. If he had not had his gun with him it would have been impossible for him to shoot himself.

Of course if he was really determined and it wasn't just a passing feeling he would've found another way, so I agree with you that you can't blame gun ownership on this.

vacri• 11 years ago

Strange that the article sounds puzzled at why he took his life, when it's clear that a drug kingpin would get a 'rest-of-your-life-and-more' sentence. Even if he got a 'lenient' sentence, the guy was 57 and would spend the rest of his healthy days behind bars. Not much of a mystery there.

peterwwillis2• 11 years ago

Not just that. He ran the growing operation, meaning he was not the drug kingpin. They sell to the real drug dealers who handle the illegal distribution. If it was the largest pot operation, that means he was beholden to the largest drug dealers, who probably told him his family would pay if he ever talked. Hence killing himself before he could talk.

S_A_P• 11 years ago

I can't say anybody is better off now that this guy is "off the streets"

jo6gwb• 11 years ago

Can someone explain what these traps are? "One of the investigators noticed that a set of steel shelves was on wheels. He yanked on them and they did not roll. He then noted that they were held in place by magnets in the way of “traps,” the secret compartments used in cars to hide guns and drugs."

How Bees Revealed a Pot Farm Beneath the Maraschino Cherries

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