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WNB

Deputies, DEA Shut Down Medical Pot Shop
Lesli A. Maxwell | The Sacramento Bee | 7/8/2005

Weapons, Plants Seized; Owner With Felony Record Is Arrested

A medical marijuana dispensary owner - who did prison time for embezzling $5 million while a state employee - was arrested Thursday on suspicion of operating his shop without a legal business license and of illegal weapons possession. Sacramento County sheriff's deputies shut down Alternative Specialties and arrested Louis Wayne Fowler after searching his Folsom Boulevard shop and his Rio Linda home, as well as his parents' and his sister's homes, said Sgt. R.L. Davis, sheriff's spokesman.

Financial documents relating to the shop were seized, along with a semiautomatic pistol and an illegal fully automatic assault weapon that officers found in Fowler's car, Davis said. Fowler's felony record makes it illegal for him to possess any weapons.

Sheriff's deputies also alerted the federal Drug Enforcement Administration, which raided the shop Thursday night. Five DEA agents carried out three boxes marked "DEA evidence" and removed hundreds of marijuana plants. Fowler, who served seven years in state prison for embezzling $5 million from the state in the early 1980s while he was an entry-level accountant, opened the shop last August.

His application for a business license had been denied and county code enforcement officials considered his operation to be an illegal one, said Craig Moyle, a spokesman for Sacramento County's Municipal Services Agency.

Investigators from the District Attorney's Office and the Sheriff's Department also had been looking into the legality of Fowler's business and whether he had been properly reporting income to government agencies, Davis said.

"Because of who he is and because he was definitely operating without a business license, they served the search warrants," Davis said.

The homes of Fowler's family members were searched because investigators believed financial documents relating to the shop were kept there, Davis said.

Fowler's mother, Linda M. Fowler, is president of the North Sacramento Unified School District board. Neither she nor her husband, Glen, could be reached for comment Thursday night.

Fowler's sister, Mary Jennifer Berg, worked in her brother's shop and has been trying to open a medical marijuana dispensary in Citrus Heights.

For much of Thursday, several sheriff's deputies camped out inside the shop - - where dozens of marijuana plants were in plain view through large windows - - as patients arrived to find the dispensary had been closed.

"It's certainly a setback for people who rely on this dispensary," said 33-year-old Brian Sorgatz, who said he buys marijuana to help control symptoms related to his attention deficit disorder. "This seems like selective law enforcement to me ... using the business license issue as a pretext to raid this dispensary. They do know that they are thwarting the will of the people of California."

In 1996, California voters approved Proposition 215, called the Compassionate Use Act, permitting patients with a doctor's recommendation to use marijuana. But the conflict between California and federal law - which bans marijuana use for any purpose - has made operating medical marijuana dispensaries precarious as federal drug agents have raided such operations.

Fowler, who is one of four owners of medicinal marijuana dispensaries in Sacramento County, also is the most high-profile, and some activists say his outspokenness may have drawn extra attention to his operation.

After the U.S. Supreme Court ruled last month that California's law legalizing medicinal marijuana would not protect users from being arrested by federal law enforcement authorities, Fowler welcomed reporters and cameras into his shop. He was the only local dispensary owner willing to speak publicly.

"I hope that people don't judge us from their impression of one facility," said Ryan Landers, California director of the American Alliance for Medical Cannabis. "I hope that this doesn't set a precedent for what will happen in the community. It's far safer for patients to get their medicine through dispensaries than to buy it on the street."

Three other medical marijuana dispensaries operate in Sacramento County, even though county officials imposed a moratorium on such shops last fall. Those dispensaries, Moyle said, are allowed to operate because they properly filed appeals after their business licenses were denied. Fowler, however, had not filed an appeal, Moyle said.

Fowler, who remained in the Sacramento County jail Thursday night on a no-bail hold, earned notoriety in 1989 when state law enforcement officials arrested him for pulling off what authorities at the time called California's largest theft of public funds.

As an entry-level accountant for the State Water Resources Control Board from 1982 to 1985, Fowler set up a phony water treatment plant, forged a state contract and funneled $5.1 million in taxpayer money to the nonexistent business. His scheme went undetected until authorities were tipped off in 1988, three years after Fowler had left the agency and moved to Arizona, where he was using the name of William David Rise, a Sacramento man who had been accidentally electrocuted.

Most of the money was never recovered. Fowler's father, Glen, also was implicated in the embezzlement case and pleaded no contest to three counts of money laundering.

__________________
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Ignorance is Strength

 

thefear

The homes of Fowler's family members were searched because investigators believed financial documents relating to the shop were kept there, Davis said.

Bull****.

And Cali belongs to me, not the ****ing FDA, I call war.

thefear

Heh, I just read it the rest of the way, but why his mother?

Lady_Mary

Hi WNB,
That is a great, thought provoking article. Thanks for posting it.

All the best,
Lollie

killer12382

He sure wasn't the poster child for the ideal med pot store operator, now was he?