| Hedi Fleiss from a 2008 booking photo. |
Former high-profile Hollywood pimp Heidi Fleiss has been charged with several marijuana-related crimes after police say they found about 400 plants at her Pahrump, Nevada home last week while serving warrants on another woman.
Police in the small town 45 miles west of Las Vegas weren’t originally looking for Fleiss or marijuana, but say that when they scoured the property looking for their target they came upon 158 cannabis plants growing in Fleiss’s backyard.
Around that time, police saw Fleiss walk from a second home nearby to her residence. Fleiss admitted to growing the plants, according to police. She says she was growing them to sell to a medical cannabis cooperative in Las Vegas, though admitted that she didn’t have the proper caregiver licensing according to Las Vegas Fox 5.
A subsequent search turned up 234 plants in a nearby home that Fleiss was at, according to Fox 5. Police also found cultivation equipment including nutrients and lights at Fleiss’s home.
And without that paperwork, police weren’t too forgiving. Fleiss has been charged with possession of marijuana with intent to sell, possession of drug paraphernalia and maintaining a home where drugs are used and sold.
Fleiss wasn’t arrested, however. The uncharacteristically friendly police say that her cooperation played into their decision not to haul her in, but it was also because Fleiss keeps about $200,000 worth of exotic birds as pets and the cops didn’t want her winged friends to be without human supervision.
For those that don’t remember, Fleiss was first thrust into the media spotlight when she was arrested in 1993 for running hookers to high-profile Hollywood actors like Charlie Sheen as well as studio bigwigs. She was eventually convicted on tax charges and spent about two years in prison.
She apparently didn’t completely leave prostitution behind, and at one point was trying to start a legal brothel in Pahrump that catered exclusively to women, according to Reuters.