About 200 federal, state and local officers swept ten marijuana plots in the southeastern tip of the Chequamegon-Nicolet National Forest on Wednesday 11 August 2010, in Oconto and Menominee counties, with at least 1,000 more plants found on the adjacent Menominee Indian Reservation.[1][2] The investigation had run since the previous year, after a hunter came across the grow; the suspects lived around Shawano, Seymour, Mountain and Crivitz.[3][2]

Officers searched a house in Seymour where marijuana was drying throughout and seized firearms including an AK-47 rifle, and a storage unit in Shawano County holding about 72 pounds of processed marijuana in boxes and bags, some $6,000 in cash and a $2,500 wire transfer to a man in Modesto, California.[1] Sheriff Mike Jansen said 300 pounds of processed marijuana were found across the two sites, and that the haul represented marijuana from as many as 50,000 plants.[3] Attorney General J.B. Van Hollen cautioned that about 10,000 plants had been eradicated and counting was still under way, with evidence of several more grow areas.[3][1]

Twelve people were in custody after the sweep, and federal prosecutors in Green Bay charged twelve men with conspiracy to manufacture more than 1,000 plants; the complaint named Barnabe Nuñez-Guzman of Seymour, a Green Bay restaurant owner, as the group’s leader.[3][2] Nine of the suspects were arrested at a Seymour residence, and most faced a deportation hold as undocumented immigrants.[2] Van Hollen said the growing style matched Mexican cartels using American public land, but would say only that there was a Hispanic connection while investigators checked.[1]