Cheehaut Kang, pictured Dec. 2 on property he owns in Skowhegan, operates a company that helps illegal cannabis growing operations obtain state licenses in Maine’s medical marijuana program. Kang says cheap real estate and the opportunity for profits is behind the proliferation in central Maine of illicit growing operations run by Chinese immigrants. “They found that it’s a good business.” Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

By filling out a little paperwork and paying a small fee, Maine’s illegal grow houses are transitioning from farmers of black market cannabis to legal medical caregivers. One man is helping them obtain the licenses through Maine’s loose legal framework.

Hundreds of single-family homes across the state have been hollowed out and converted into industrial-scale black market cannabis farms by groups authorities say are tied to Chinese organized crime. Toxic pesticides and black market fumigants have been found in cannabis grown at the sites.

More than 120 suspected illegal grow houses have obtained caregiver licenses since law enforcement’s first grow house raids in January 2024.

Cheehaut Kang, a Brooklyn man who co-owns a house in Skowhegan, carries business cards for “Winter Sweet Taxation and Consultant LLC,” which he and his wife, Suzhu Mei, established in December.

Business cards for Winter Sweet Taxation & Consultant LLC offer “application for Maine medical marijuana” and “pesticides control and management” in English on one side and Mandarin on the other. Dylan Tusinski/Portland Press Herald

The business cards advertise “application for Maine medical marijuana” and “pesticides control and management” in English on one side and Mandarin on the other.

“Our endeavor and our company is to help our brethren apply for this medical marijuana cultivation license, and we help them with taxation too,” Kang said.

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About 50 grow houses have been busted across the state by a combination of local and federal law enforcement since January 2024. More than 30 people have been arrested inside the grow houses so far.

The state Office of Cannabis Policy confirmed it has issued medical caregiver licenses to former illegal grow houses after a Morning Sentinel investigation in October. The office said state statute leaves the agency unable to deny caregiver applications from illicit growers.

“Cannabis operations in facilities that were recently the site of an illicit operation is a significant concern to OCP,” the agency’s media relations director, Alexis Soucy, said in a statement. “But simply growing at a location that was formerly an illicit facility is not sufficient to deny an application.”

Kang said his role is to help clients interact with regulators and provide guidance on growing. The demand for his services is rising.

Kang tours most grow houses where he helps secure a license. The majority of his clients grow cannabis in homes with large mold infestations, he said. Many apply pesticides incorrectly or in huge doses because they are rarely fluent enough in English to read labels.

Maine does not mandate mold or chemical testing in medical cannabis.

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“I’m well aware of their practices,” Kang said. “I partake, but I would not smoke my clients’ stuff.”

‘GROW WEED AND MAKE MONEY’

Chinese criminal organizations have cornered America’s illegal marijuana markets in recent years, as about a dozen other states from California and Colorado to Oklahoma and Oregon have dealt with illegal grows over the last 20 years.

Kang said Chinese criminal groups, which he refers to as the “Triads,” created the first illegal grow houses in Maine years ago, buoyed by cheap rural real estate and quick money in black market cannabis that can be easily driven to Boston and New York City.

“Why there is this sudden wave of Chinese people coming in to grow in the beginning illegally? Because some of them, they heard from those people who have been working for the Triads,” he said. “They found that it’s a good business.”

Cheehaut Kang pulls a wagon Dec. 2 across his property in Skowhegan. Kang says most of the Chinese immigrants operating growing businesses are not connected to organized crime. He also says they need to improve their practices to match those of other growers in Maine. “Chinese growers, you know, they’re not tied to the Triads, but they’re still not growing the right way.” Rich Abrahamson/Morning Sentinel

Kang and Mei learned of the Maine grow houses the same way hundreds of others did: Friends of friends spread the word through Chinese immigrant communities, many of whom purchased property in rural Maine between 2022 and 2024.

Police raids targeting illegal grows in Maine began last year. Kang said many of the properties do not have links to organized crime; “mom and pop,” he called them.

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Kang saw the opportunity to offer a solution.

“After the raid, everybody were (sic) panicking, the mom and pop, because they didn’t know better, they just thought ‘Hey, grow weed and make money,'” Kang said. “We are the people who speak English, are educated, and they come to us for advice on certain things and we give it.”

The Office of Cannabis Policy issues licenses to medical marijuana caregivers to grow, transport and sell cannabis products. By filling out an online form and paying a small fee, anyone can become a state-licensed caregiver — even if they are not residents.

Unlike most other states with medical cannabis programs, Maine’s licensed individual caregivers can create businesses and sell cannabis to anyone with a patient card.

Through lax licensing requirements and a largely unregulated market, Kang began helping illegal growers transition into Maine’s legal medical market.

“Because most of our brethren does not speak English, they do not read or write English, our service is to help them navigate all those applications, inspections, and all those requirements,” Kang said.

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The Office of Cannabis Policy said Maine cannabis law leaves the agency largely only able to deny applicants imprisoned on drug-related charges for more than a year. Even if OCP rejects an application, another can be filed after 30 days.

The agency does inspect the growing site of every nonresident who applies for a caregiver license, Soucy said.

“Out-of-state applicants tend to be less familiar with Maine laws and regulations relative to Maine residents,” Soucy said. Those pre-inspections have resulted in numerous denials of licenses.”

Kang said many licensed Maine grow houses are his clients, though he declined to share how many customers Winter Sweet has. He insists that most are not associated with organized crime.

“At first, it was just like friends. But after when some were arrested, and some were panicking, they want to start to apply for the medical caregiver license,” Kang said.

BLACK MARKET BENEFITS

Despite having medical caregiver licenses, many of his clients struggle to find a market for their product in Maine, Kang said.

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When his clients try to sell their cannabis over the counter for cash — transactions that are legal under Maine’s regulatory framework — he said most dispensaries reject the product for the mold and chemicals it contains.

Instead, many have continued selling into illegal markets, where profit margins are high.

“They can buy among themselves, because medical can’t keep up,” Kang said. “Right now, the (black) market rate can be $1,000, $1,200 (a pound.) They don’t get that in Maine, mostly because of their quality. It’s about $450 to $400 a pound.”

Even with a state license, caregivers can operate outside the law. There are legal limits to how much cannabis one can grow.

Legal grow houses can also be illegally financed or used as hubs to traffic people and drugs, law enforcement officials said.

Several grow houses with caregiver licenses have been raided by law enforcement in Somerset County, where Sheriff Dale Lancaster’s office has busted over 20 such operations in the last year — though he declined to share how many were licensed caregivers.

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Lancaster said grow houses obtaining caregiver licenses “adds a few more steps but doesn’t preclude our investigation.”

“This is one route they’re taking to continue their operations. We can’t lose sight of the big picture,” Lancaster said. “These illegal Asian grow activities have been identified as transnational criminal organizations. This isn’t someone who’s trying to operate legally. At the end of the day, they’re taking advantage of Maine law.”

Still, it’s less lucrative for many grow house operators to join the legal markets when they are already embedded in insular black market communities.

On WeChat, a Chinese messaging platform, Kang said growers sell and solicit everything from workers to electrical equipment to cannabis seeds and flower.

“Friends text this guy, that guy, that guy, you know? We are not engaged in whatever they are doing, we just know what they are growing,” Kang said.

A raid last year revealed what officials say was an illegal cannabis growing operation at a single-family house at 368 West Ridge Road in Cornville, top. The lower photograph, taken by the Somerset County Sheriff’s Office, shows the house’s interior. Marijuana is moving from illegal grow sites into the medical market, which officials say is a health concern for consumers. Courtesy of Somerset County Sheriff’s Office

Many grow house workers are victims of forced labor and human trafficking lured in by dubious job postings and opportunities on websites and apps like WeChat, local law enforcement officials have said.

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Federal investigators said they have found no evidence of human trafficking in Maine’s grow houses, though Andrew Lizotte, the assistant U.S. attorney leading the federal investigation, noted that identical operations in over a dozen other states have employed forms of human trafficking.

The U.S. Attorney’s Office for the District of Maine declined to comment on this story.

Dozens of veiled job listings appear on numerous Chinese-language job boards for grow houses in Maine, most of which direct to anonymous recruiters on WeChat, a Morning Sentinel investigation found in August.

Though medical caregivers can hire any number of assistants over 21 years old, those assistants have to be registered with state regulators. Kang said it’s not uncommon for his clients to use unlicensed labor.

“In harvesting, they gather people to help. ‘Hey, you’re free, come and help us.’ Two or three of them come help with the trimming, so they know each other this way,” Kang said. “If the field inspector from OCP comes and says, ‘Who is this guy?’ and he does not have a card, then your license in jeopardy. That’s why we want to advise them.”

Kang maintains that most of his clients, and most of Maine’s grow houses, are small-scale operations not associated with organized crime or human trafficking.

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Still, he notes the cannabis they grow isn’t just low quality: It can be outright harmful.

“Chinese growers, you know, they’re not tied to the Triads,” Kang said. “But they’re still not growing the right way.”

A black mold infestation and exposed electrical wiring is seen inside a cannabis “grow house” raided by sheriff’s deputies in Somerset County. Courtesy of Somerset County Sheriff’s Office

MOLD, CHEMICALS AND ROTTEN WEED

Kang said he visits most of his clients’ facilities. It’s more common for them to grow weed with mold and toxic chemicals than without, he said.

Chemical testing of cannabis from several licensed grow houses has found dangerous and potentially fatal levels of toxic fertilizers and insecticides.

“There’s mold, there’s bud rot, the thing they are most fearful about,” Kang said. “It can destroy your whole harvest when they have a bad environment, the air, the circulation, and not only that, there could be spider mites.”

Bud rot describes a gray mold infestation in which cannabis plants become coated in mold spores that rot the plant with an incurable infection.

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Toxic imported Chinese fumigants have been found in several grow houses so far, federal prosecutors said, posing a hazard for both grow house workers and those consuming the cannabis.

Maine does not mandate chemical or mold testing in its medical cannabis. Even if a dispensary owner voluntarily tests their product, such black market chemicals cannot be detected by standard testing.

A pile of discarded fertilizer containers appears outside an illegal marijuana grow house in Somerset County. Photo submitted by Somerset County Sheriff Dale Lancaster

Though Kang said he would not smoke his clients’ weed, he is willing to use his own property as their grow space.

Winter Sweet LLC is registered to 667 Waterville Road in Skowhegan, which Kang and Mei purchased in 2022 on behalf of Mei’s brother, Yan Qiang Mei of Missouri City, Texas.

Kang said the property, formerly home to Blackman’s Kennels, will soon house one of his clients’ medical cannabis farms.

The home and its electrical system were modified to accommodate a “multimillion-dollar manufacturing business” Kang started in the last four years with Mei. Kang declined to share what they manufactured, but is adamant that no marijuana was grown at the property.

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“Our client introduced some people who say they would like to cultivate, rent our property, part of it, to do a legal marijuana medical cultivation, and we are able to apply the license for them,” Kang said. “We are in the process of applying the license for them since we have ample electrical current needs.”

The property exhibits the same hallmarks as the roughly 50 illegal grow houses raided by police statewide so far: Electrical systems have been modified, windows have been boarded up, numerous heat pumps have been installed and the buildings have several new exhaust vents visible from the outside.

Kang insists the operation is legally above board now and has been since he purchased the home three years ago.

“It was not for marijuana cultivation initially. It was for this business proposal,” Kang said. “Like I say, we are law-abiding citizens. We are trying to help people do the right thing. That is our endeavor.”

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