The DEA, working with 15 other local, state and federal agencies, raided 28 locations across six counties on Michigan’s western shore on 16 and 17 October 2013 in an operation called High Mileage.[1][2] About 160 officers took part in the sweep.[2] The targets called themselves the Medical Marijuana Team, and investigators alleged they used the state’s medical marijuana law as a front for selling thousands of dollars’ worth of cannabis.[1] A DEA task officer wrote that weeks of cellphone wiretaps showed the group was “out to make money” rather than supplying sick people.[1]
Agents seized 500 or more marijuana plants plus several hundred other items held as evidence, and investigators put the group’s price at $3,200 per pound of high-grade cannabis.[1][2] Twenty-seven people were arrested and charged with conspiracy to manufacture and distribute 100 or more plants, and nearly all had been booked into Kent County Jail by 18 October.[2]
On 21 October, Assistant U.S. Attorney Mark Courtade asked for all the charges to be dismissed, saying the government could not be ready for grand jury review within 30 days and preferred a dismissal pending that review.[1][2] Earlier police visits had found some of the same growers’ operations lawful, including a 72-plant garden examined in 2011 and a 28-plant grow inspected in August 2012.[2]
