Caught with 1/4 Ton of Pot

[Zardozimo Oprah Bannedalas]

Story here.

Still wearing dark false eyelashes after a night in the Franklin County jail, a Beverly Hills, Calif., woman accused of bringing 23 bales of marijuana to Columbus faced charges in U.S. District Court yesterday.

Drug Enforcement Administration agents picked up Lisette Lee, 28, at Port Columbus on Monday night after she arrived on a chartered jet from Van Nuys, Calif., with a bodyguard, two assistants and 13 large suitcases.

Inside the suitcases, agents found 506 pounds of marijuana, according to a DEA complaint. The DEA esimated the street value of the drugs to be $500,000.

Lee, reportedly a California socialite, made no statement during her initial appearance in court in Columbus. She wore drab prison clothing, handcuffs, and shackles on her ankles.

She was charged with felony counts of possession of marijuana and conspiracy to distribute marijuana and was returned to jail until a bond hearing at 10 a.m. Friday.

Lee told the DEA that her family is associated with several multimillion-dollar businesses. Internet searches show she has had a small part in a movie called The Doorman .

The DEA complaint says that drug-enforcement agents in Los Angeles alerted Columbus agents that Lee was making "suspicious flights" to Columbus with "an excessive amount of luggage." When she arrived at 6:40 p.m. Monday on a Gulfstream aircraft at Lane Aviation, agents arrested her.

Lee told the agents that she is a model and a recording artist and was bringing equipment and belongings to a boyfriend who had bought a horse farm in Ohio, the complaint says. She, however, couldn't provide the boyfriend's last name.

She said this is the fourth trip to Columbus that she's organized at the request of a friend from California. Each time, she said, the friend gave her 12 to 14 suitcases to bring to Columbus on a charter flight. She would deliver the suitcases to a Columbus hotel room, stay in Columbus for two or three days, then return to the same hotel room and pick up other suitcases before flying back to California.

She said that the friend gave her $60,000 for each of the trips and to pay the others who flew with her. So far, no one else has been charged.

Lee told agents that three cell phones, cocaine, marijuana and drug paraphernalia found in one bag belonged to her, but she said that some suspected drug ledgers in the same bag were not hers, the complaint says.

The DEA would not give the name of the hotel where Lee had dropped the suitcases or provide further details of the case.

Local lawyers Bill Meeks and Dave Thomas represented Lee in court yesterday, but they said they knew little about her yet.

Meeks asked U.S. Magistrate Judge Elizabeth A. Deavers to wait until Friday to hold the bond hearing because Lee's family could not get to Columbus before Thursday.

After the court appearance, Lee asked a DEA agent whether he would look in her Louis Vuitton bag and provide her glasses and contact lens case.

Assistant U.S. attorney Tim Prichard said Lee faces five to 40 years in prison and a maximum fine of $2 million on the charges.

kgray@dispatch.com

For the TL;DR folks: Rich girl from California flies in 500 pounds of pot to Ohio.

This story interests me. Perhaps this is the family business. Perhaps she just got a really good wholesale price that she couldn't pass up. Either way, very interesting.

[Doggy Daddy]

I'm pretty sure I smelled that jet when it passed over here on it's way to Cowtown.   

DD

[Fly320s]

Story here.For the TL;DR folks: Rich girl from California flies in 500 pounds of pot to Ohio.

This story interests me. Perhaps this is the family business. Perhaps she just got a really good wholesale price that she couldn't pass up. Either way, very interesting.

She is a mule, plain and simple. Maybe a high-priced, high-load, high-speed, high-maintanance mule, but still a mule.

[280plus]

Except a real mule might be just a bit smarter than she is. 

[lee n. field]

Driving a pickup with a topper would be a whole lot less conspicuous.

[tyme]

What a waste of taxdollars.  Oh no!  Marijuana!

[Tuco]

Inside the suitcases, agents found 506 pounds of marijuana, according to a DEA complaint. The DEA esimated the street value of the drugs to be $500,000.

62 dollars an ounce
15 dollars a quarter oz.
2 dollars a gram.

See? see?
I've been telling you people for years!!!!!!!!
Semi-legalization has driven the price way WAY down.
Just look at the DEA's own numbers.

[MicroBalrog]

$60,000 a trip? Not bad at all.

[280plus]

Last time I got a key from across the border it cost me $85. What do you mean prices have gone down? 

 

[AZRedhawk44]

Last time I got a key from across the border it cost me $85. What do you mean prices have gone down? 

 

Well, that's in Mexico.  Now bring that key across the border.

[280plus]

Let me tell you a bit of that story. Long haired Mexican dude I knew down in the border area right around TJ. We take him down to the legitimate border crossing, give him the money, he leaves, walks through the gate into mexico, returns back through the gate like 20 minutes later with a regular big sized brown grocery bag partially rolled up, carrying it in his hand like it was his lunch, and within the bag are 2 kilos of the worst pot there ever was for $85 each.

I'm going to guess we're talking 1978.  

[280plus]

Well, that's in Mexico.  Now bring that key across the border.

Funny you should mention that, go back one square...  

[AJ Dual]

[Michael Douglas]Now THAT's a CAMPFIRE![/Michael Douglas]

[Monkeyleg]

Back in the early 70's, my friend and I would buy a pound of good quality pot for $140. We'd sell 14 ounces to friends at $10 an ounce, and keep the balance of two ounces for ourselves.

I remember the police and DEA back then reporting outrageous street values for grass they'd seized. On a per-ounce basis it worked out to something like $50 an ounce.

From what I understand, the ~$1000 an ounce in this story might be a little high for today's selling prices, but it's not five times the real street value.

[MicroBalrog]

She said that the friend gave her $60,000 for each of the trips and to pay the others who flew with her. So far, no one else has been charged.

Assuming she is saying the truth:

That's a shipping fee of  $120 per pound of weed.

And people wonder why legalization proponents think legal weed would be cheaper?

[280plus]

It's pretty cheap when you can grow it in your back yard. 

[280plus]

So the rest of the story goes, There were 3 of us, I was the middleman and these two guys were the buyers. They had a Datsun 240z. Anyone who remembers those knows they are two seaters. Well, guess who gets to ride in the back under the hatch. This is ok except on the way back I was sitting on 2 keys in the back under the hatch. Would you believe the cops stopped us and gave us a ticket for having me in the back while I was sitting on the two keys? I swear, there I was, sitting on two keys of pot while the cop gives us a ticket.  

Then he sends us on our merry way. Hence the value of keeping your cool.

Actually the stuff was so bad it probably would have tested negative anyways. I've smoked better hay. 

[freakazoid]

Aren't there scanners and stuff at airports to pick up that you are carrying drugs?

[Harold Tuttle]

 The "street value" is calculated on the gross retail value of the smallest sales unit.

call it 1000 joints per pound
2 kilos= 4.5 pounds
You were prolly sitting on 4500 joints or 5000 dollars of pot

[Harold Tuttle]

scanners?

[tyme]

@freakazoid, I don't think so.  They have explosive residue detectors, and they might have drug-sniffing dogs wandering around, but I don't think they religiously screen every piece of luggage, or even a majority of luggage, for drugs... unless there's enough of it to raise suspicion after an x-ray.  International travel is probably a different matter, since they'd want to screen for illegal smuggling of plants and animals (to prevent drug smuggling, to prevent import/export duty avoidance, and to prevent accidental insect, bacteria, and virus import/export), but I think even there they still rely mostly on hand searches.

Does even the DEA have scanners for drugs?  Is there any agency or place where bio+electronic scanners are used in lieu of drug k-9 units for detecting drugs?  I've read about various drug detecting technologies over the years but I've never read of them being commercialized and mass produced.

[Seenterman]

How many people traveled with her on the plane!? 508 Lbs in one trip! Damn how did she carry it!

[Tuco]

The last I heard - HEARD!!! (late 1980's) good redeye (buds with little or no seed) was in the neighborhood of 60-90 dollars per half ounce.   Home grown-species specific hydro stuff was 120 a half ounce when you could find it could be found and the hippies who had it were all "This is the people's bud, man, and we can't sell all of it to just one person, man, cause that's like monopolistic and facist.  Dig this cool lava lamp."

Sure, get the quantity up and the per unit price goes down, but as our own Chrome-Domed Professor pointed out, the DEA jacks prices up to the per-unit street value, to justify their effectiveness.

As I said, the prices cited in by the DEA indicate low LOW prices or low LOW quality.  
Low low quality isn't worth flying across the border.

[Jamisjockey]

It's pretty cheap when you can grow it in your back yard. 

Which would cause the demand to crash and put a real hurt on the cartels.

[Firethorn]

It's pretty cheap when you can grow it in your back yard. 

You can grow tobacco in many of the same areas as you can grow pot.  You can make your own wine and/or beer, even liquer.

Yet most people don't bother.  It's easier to buy from the store.