Former Packard Plant Owner To Surrender In Medical Marijuana Case Today

[bobandtorey]

Romel Casab, an Oakland County businessman and real estate owner, is expected to be charged Thursday in federal court after an investigation alleging he used businesses, including a medical marijuana dispensary, as fronts for a large-scale drug ring, according to federal court records.

Casab, who at one time claimed to be part-owner of the former Packard Motor Co. plant in Detroit, is scheduled to surrender to the U.S. Marshals Service on Thursday, his lawyer told Crain's Detroit Business. The case is emerging five years after drug agents raided nine locations across metro Detroit, including a dispensary tied to Casab, and seized a 1988 Ferrari, a 1928 Studebaker, a 2001 Harley-Davidson motorcycle, guns, marijuana and more.

The case comes eight years after voters approved state-regulated therapeutic use of marijuana and exposes a policy issue facing communities across Michigan, experts said. The communities, and some state legislators, are concerned about controlling and policing medical marijuana dispensaries that have popped up in Detroit and elsewhere in recent years.

The case, which legal experts said is unusual in size and scope for a cased tied to medical marijuana, also comes at a time when three bills are pending in the Senate’s judiciary committee that would tighten regulations for medical marijuana growers, processors and distributors and track production.

The legislation would require medical marijuana growers, processors, provisioning centers or dispensaries, transporters and testing sites to have state licenses in order to operate; allow municipalities to limit the number of marijuana businesses within their borders; charge a 3 percent excise fee on marijuana facilities; include edible marijuana products as an allowed form of medical marijuana; and establish a “seed-to-sale” tracking system for all plants, products and transactions.

"The case could bring legitimacy, control and uniformity to the law," said Grosse Pointe Park attorney Tim Dinan, who represents both medical marijuana caregivers and patients. "This case illustrates the shortcomings of having incomplete legislation."

Search warrant records obtained by Crain's Detroit Business detail a sprawling, 10-year drug and tax crime investigation spanning at least three states that targeted what federal investigators say is a drug ring headed by Casab, 54, of Commerce Township. The alleged drug ring involved at least 12 people, investigators said, but only Casab is expected to be charged Thursday.

Casab's lawyer said the allegations are false.

"My client is not a drug dealer, OK?" defense lawyer Michael Rataj said Wednesday. "He's never been a drug dealer, he is not a drug dealer and these charges are frivolous."

Casab will surrender Thursday morning and expects be arraigned at 1 p.m. in federal court, Rataj said.

The case could have a chilling effect across the state, particularly in Detroit, where city officials recently passed strict new laws governing the operation of medical marijuana dispensaries in hopes of thwarting drug trafficking and illegal activity.

In 2012, Detroiters voted to decriminalize marijuana when adults 21 and older possess less than an ounce on private property. The move has helped fuel the rapid expansion of dispensaries in Detroit and other Michigan cities such as Ferndale and Ann Arbor did the same thing in recent years.

"My hope is that those that are profiting off medical marijuana, this sets them back a little bit," Macomb County Executive Mark Hackel said. "Maybe it will make them think 'maybe we shouldn't be so bold as to put up a storefront out here.'"

Marijuana is illegal under federal law but enforcing the law and cracking down on dispensaries is a low priority for local law enforcement in cities like Detroit with more pressing crimes, legal experts say.

"They exist in a gray area," Dinan said. "What they are doing is technically illegal, but these guys just fall under the radar."

The search warrants detail a colorful, decade-long investigation stretching from Arizona to Nebraska and Detroit. Federal agents allege in court filings that Casab imported thousands of pounds of marijuana from Arizona and tried to hire Oakland County Sheriff's deputies to provide security at his marijuana dispensary in Walled Lake.

The records also indicate undercover IRS agents wore a secret recording device while posing as prospective buyers of the Coliseum Bar & Grill, an Eight Mile Road strip club. The strip club was being sold for $20 million so the owner could join Casab's marijuana business, agents allege.

The alleged drug ring included partners, investors, growers, security guards, couriers and traffickers, according to a search warrant affidavit.

As of Wednesday, no criminal charges have been filed relating to the alleged drug ring. The U.S. Attorney's Office declined comment.

The case dates to November 2005 when Nebraska State Patrol troopers stopped a stretch limousine on eastbound Interstate 80 near Lincoln. The limousine was headed to Detroit after leaving Phoenix, Ariz.

Inside the limo was metro Detroit resident Laith Korkis, $343,840 cash inside a briefcase and more than 22 pounds of marijuana hidden underneath a passenger seat.

Korkis claimed the cash, saying it was money he earned from selling a business.

"No one claimed the marijuana," Assistant U.S. Attorney Nancy Svoboda wrote in a court filing.

News of the bust soon reached Detroit.

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents were told by a source that Korkis was an alleged drug associate of Romel Casab and had trafficked marijuana, according to court records.

The case involving the forfeiture of the cash, which ended with prosecutors returning the money to Korkis in 2007, came three years before Michigan voters in 2008 legalized marijuana use for medical purposes. Marijuana dispensaries soon started appearing across metro Detroit.

The next year, in October 2009, a confidential source allegedly told DEA task force officers that Korkis and Casab had trafficked marijuana since 2000, according to court records.

During that time, the duo "were transporting 500-1,000 pound loads of marijuana from Arizona to Michigan for distribution," DEA Task Force Officer Douglas Stewart wrote in a search warrant affidavit.

While investigating the alleged drug ring, IRS agents learned in July 2010 that Casab was launching a medical marijuana business and that his partner was Johni Semma, the Coliseum strip club owner, according to court records. 

Semma is a Walled Lake businessman described in court records as owner of Bayside Sports Grille in Walled Lake and Coliseum Bar & Grill, which was marketed to prospective buyers as the largest strip club in Detroit with more than 50 dancers, 20 plasma TVs and a heliport. 

In July 2010, Semma was trying to sell the strip club, advertised as being decked out in African sandstone, Italian leather and soaring cathedral ceilings. The place had annual sales of $3.5 million, according to court records.

In July 2010, three undercover Internal Revenue Service agents posed as potential buyers and toured the Coliseum, according to court records. The agents were wearing a recording device.

Semma wanted out of the strip club scene because he had started a company in Africa exporting gold dust and because he was getting involved in a medical marijuana business, according to court records.

Semma's lawyer did not return a phone call seeking comment Wednesday.

Separately, a confidential source told investigators that Casab and Semma were involved in marijuana trafficking, according to federal court records. The source said they had seen Casab and Semma with "multi-pound quantities of marijuana" and hundreds of marijuana plants.

Casab and Semma were partners in several large marijuana-growing operations, including at industrial buildings in the 29000 block of Northline Road in Romulus, in the 6300 block of East Seven Mile Road in Detroit and 1020 Decker Road in Walled Lake, federal agents alleged.

The Decker Road site was the business location of a dispensary called Caregivers of America that was tied to Casab, court records allege.

The 55,000-square-foot warehouse had enough room to grow 1,500 marijuana plants, according to court records.

Another confidential source told investigators “Romel Casab had bragged about marijuana being legal and that law enforcement was not doing anything about growing and selling marijuana as long as everyone keeps saying it is for medical reasons,” according to a court filing.

 

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article/20160113/NEWS/160119896/former-packard-plant-owner-to-surrender-in-medical-marijuana-case

[trichcycler]

wow !

[t-pain]

rich people dont get raided at home, they surrender...

[t-pain]

 

U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration agents were told by a source that Korkis was an alleged drug associate of Romel Casab and had trafficked marijuana, according to court records.

 

bet they are using secret nsa wiretaps and parallel construction.

[bobandtorey]

http://detroit.cbslocal.com/2011/04/12/medical-marijuana-business-raided-in-walled-lake/

 

I remember when this happened