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3 men grew pot in cave, D.A. says
By LEON ALLIGOOD | Tennessean.com | Sunday, 12/18/05
Authorities say operation could grow 100 pounds every 8 weeks

HARTSVILLE, Tenn. — Investigators from the 15th Judicial District Drug Task Force found a mother lode of marijuana in the unlikeliest of places — a cave.

Beneath a stylish A-frame home on Dixon Springs Road in eastern Trousdale County, three men allegedly set up a sophisticated operation to grow as much as 100 pounds of marijuana every eight weeks.

"It's pretty amazing what they had under there — water for irrigation, special lighting, devices to keep the humidity just right. These guys were professionals. They knew what they were doing," said District Attorney General Tommy Thompson of Hartsville.

"They could grow in 60 days what it would take four and a half months to grow outside."

Arrested on Wednesday were Brian Gibson and Greg Compton, while a third man, Fred Strunk, was arrested near Gainesville, Fla. All three are in jail, with Gibson and Compton being held in the Trousdale County Jail. Bail was set for Gibson and Compton at $5 million, while Strunk's was set at $15 million, Thompson said. Local authorities were in Florida yesterday to return Strunk to Tennessee.

According to the district attorney general, the investigation into the operation began about five years ago when a home was built above the cave, but it never appeared anyone lived there.

"The front of the cave used to be a hole that you'd crawl into, and it opened up into a pretty big room that was 20-feet high. They cut the side of the hill so you could just drive right into the cave,'' Thompson said.

The cave, reached from the house via secret entrances, is said to be about two miles long, but the marijuana operation was located about 100 yards inside. Thompson said the other end of the cave had been blocked to keep trespassers out.

According to the prosecutor, the men told locals they were going to be mining statuary rock.

In another suspicious incident, the local electric company was asked to install a larger transformer than usually required by a residence. But apparently that was not enough electrical power to operate the grow lamps required to raise 800 marijuana plants at a time. Instead of asking the electric company for more power, the men spliced into the Tri-County Electric line and were stealing electricity, Thompson said.

"They had the operation set up so that one person could operate it during the growing season,'' he noted.

To harvest the illegal crop, Thompson said the men would hire a half-dozen Hispanic workers in Arizona and drive them to Tennessee. For part of the journey the windows on the van would be covered so the workers did not know where they were.

"They would drive right into the cave and let them out to begin working,'' the prosecutor said.

"As for distributing it, we're sure that some of it went to Nashville and other locations in the area."

There could be more arrests, but Thompson said he believes the ringleaders of the operation have already been nabbed.

"It's just unbelievable what they've done. It's like something out of a James Bond movie."

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troublemaker_42

Awesome!! too bad they were caught, but the electricity situation was bound to cause some questions, as was a house mysteriously built over a cave entrance with no occupants. Had it been located above a lesser known cave, with a better handle on the electrical situation, they may have gotten away with it!

TheNewGuy

I have to give proper respect to these guys. I've never heard of such a proffessional grow-op before.

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"Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power." ~P.J. O'Rourke

killer12382

Stealing the electricity was the dumbest thing they did. The power company doesn't care how much power you use as long as you PAY the bill. It was greed that got them busted. They had a commercial grow op going on and their lies got out of hand. When they told people they were miners and when nothing came out of the mine didn't they think people ween't going to notice?

Buzzby

Lessons to be learned:

1) Keep the grow house looking like a normal residence.

2) Don't use excessive amounts of electricity from the mains.

3) Don't steal power.


They should have kept the place occupied, used a generator, and bought their fuel by the tankful at different gas stations.

"When you live outside the law you must be honest."
-- Bob Dylan


Actually, a lot of people get busted because the power company notices that they're using 50 times as much electricity as a normal residence.

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killer12382

If you keep your grow op lights under 4000 W total you should be able t ogrow without fear.

Buzzby

You can't grow 800 plants (which is what the people in this story were doing) under 4000 watts of lighting.

killer12382

Thats where the greed came in. They needed huge amounts of juice to power that huge grow op. What i'm trying to say is that you should limit your grow op lighting to 4000W. And if you want to grow alot of medpot then have multiple grow ops at different locations.

Buzzby

That's like telling Ford that they should have people build cars for them in their back yards.

This was not a medical marijuana grow for a few friends, it was business. In business there's a thing called "economy of scale" - it costs less per unit to make a lot of things than to make a few of them. Maximizing profit isn't greed. It's just good business.

If they'd kept the house occupied and supplied their own electricity they would have stayed "under the radar".

Cassius

Agreed, maximizing profit is good business. However, your suggestion of using a generator would be VERY expensive. The power company can supply electricity to you orders of magnitude cheaper (due to the same economies of scale we're talking about) than you can make it by using a generator. Add in the prices of fuel these days....

Maximizing profit is definitely a very important goal for all businesses, however I have to think that using gasoline to generate electricity long-term would kill most if not all of any profit they would make.

If I was going to do something like this, I think I would have something like 3-6 houses nearby that I owned, that I could syphon juice off of. Then each 1/6th portion of the electricity bill looks like it belongs to a separate residence. Of course, you have the added work of keeping 6 houses looking like they're being lived in, but I don't think that would be too hard.

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