A few more follow-ups today, three days after the Drug Enforcement Administration searched more than a dozen medical-marijuana operations around Puget Sound, including GAME Collective, owned by a West Seattle man, with a location in West Seattle and a “lounge” in White Center. Last night, Thomas Bates from the U.S. Attorney’s Office was at the South Delridge-White Center Community Safety Coalition meeting. He said the regional operation mostly targeted medical-marijuana businesses “with multiple locations” that were suspected of “large-volume drug sales, money-laundering, and other operations.” While he did not address GAME Collective directly, he did mention that the “returns” from the search warrants had started to come in – those are the official documents showing what, if anything, law-enforcement officers found when they conducted the searches for which they had warrants We obtained the first two returns this afternoon. They are for two vehicles – one belonging to the GAME Collective’s owner, and one belonging to another West Seattle man listed in the original search-warrant documents as being associated with GAME. Though the search warrant empowers agents to seize anything found in a broad range of items listed, from drugs to money to recordkeeping books, the search warrant return for the 2007 Mercedes belonging to GAME Collctive’s owner says “no items seized.” For the other man’s 2010 Subaru Outback, the return document lists items seized as:
*318 grams of marijuana
*41 grams of hashish
*Toshiba laptop
*Medical marijuana patient certificate for the car’s owner
*An AT&T bill
*Photocopies of his “medical marijuana card” and driver’s license
*Receipt for “1/4# Lemon Kush” and “1/4# Woody Kush” with the notations “on consignment 11/3/11 due by 11/17/11” and “Come in 2 weeks”
The documents say the owner’s car was searched at noon on Tuesday, while the other man’s car was seized at 1 pm Tuesday. Last night Bates also stressed that the facilities that were searched had not been shut down, and that no charges had been filed. The only person arrested – NOT in connection with the West Seattle/White Center searches – was someone who was under court supervision in connection with another case, Bates explained. Regarding the entire regional operation, he said: “A lot of property was seized; using that information, there will be additional investigations that continue. Not a lot I can say about it except, in addition to the reasons why we were focusing on these operations – large amounts of drugs, large amounts of money laundering … we also heard from members of the community about some of the operations being fairly dangerous, operating not well in the community.”
| 9 COMMENTS