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Somebody in Miami has been watching too much Cheech and Chong. Miami-Dade cops say they have uncovered a huge pot growing operation in the city that was hidden in a camouflaged underground swimming pool.
Which, honestly, is one of the most bad-ass grow spots we’ve ever heard of. It seriously is straight out of Nice Dreams and probably wouldn’t have been discovered if it hadn’t have been for the blunders of the current caretakers of the property.
The story from the police is vague, but apparently cops pulled over a Range Rove driven by Valexy Quintero Consuegra in front of a house in southwest Miami that reeked like weed. Cops searched the car and found five pounds of pot – that’s when things get strange.
Instead of shutting his mouth, Quintero apparently called his buddy, Eddy Pelaez-Ramirez who was leaving through a back door. Ramirez then allegedly told the cops that he knew nothing about the pot and that there was nothing in the house. He then said that they were free to search the home.
The cops called his bluff, however. They entered the home, which they say smelled like fresh pot but didn’t find anything immediately. Then one of them discovered a hatch hidden in one of the rooms that led to a hand-dug crawl space that opened up into a sealed-off pool with 82 ganja plants inside. The pool was apparently sealed off on top with concrete and completely invisible from the surface.
| Cops entering the crawl space. |
“Who knows how long they have been functioning,” one of the detectives on the case told NBC Miami. “They could have done this for years.”
And they probably were.
The two men involved didn’t get away like Cheech and Chong. All three were charged with trafficking and possession of marijuana with intent to distribute. The trafficking charges are both felonies with up to five years in prison. Since they were growing more than 25 plants they could be looking at 15 years and up to $10,000 in fines under Florida laws.
Check out a video of the grow from NBC Miami:
| From Cheech and Chong’s Nice Dreams. |