The Georgia Department of Agriculture and the Pierce County Sheriff’s Office raided a facility in rural south Georgia on Friday 23 February 2024 expecting an illegal food manufacturing operation and instead found a sophisticated indoor marijuana grow hidden behind a fish-farm cover.[1][2][3]

Officials seized more than 11,000 marijuana plants, from seedlings to full-grown plants ready to harvest, in what they called the largest seizure from an indoor growing operation in Pierce County history.[1][2][4] Sheriff Ramsey Bennett estimated the street value at 22.3 million dollars, and said the group had run the operation since 2022 after investing hundreds of thousands of dollars in the facility.[1][3]

Four Chinese nationals, three men and one woman, were arrested and face felony possession of marijuana charges, with trafficking charges described as imminent.[1][2][5] The undercover investigation had begun about a month earlier, and federal investigators joined the case after the raid.[1][2][3]

The four suspects were held in jail without bond, one of them on an immigration hold after entering the country illegally, and all faced charges of possession, manufacturing and trafficking.[3] Sheriff Bennett said the operation was high-tech, using lighting and hand watering with a tail water recovery system, and that investigators believed the finished product was shipped out of state by a group with ties from New York City to Houston.[3]