Business
United Airlines Workers Busted For Stealing Pot From Checked Luggage
Two United Airlines ramp cargo agents were charged by the FBI earlier this month.
A pair of United Airlines workers are facing legal turbulence after getting busted for stealing marijuana from passengers’ checked luggage.
According to various media reports, the two employees––Joel Lamont Dunn and Adrian Webb––worked as ramp cargo agents for United at San Francisco International Airport.
It was there that the two allegedly operated a scheme involving other workers who were paid good money to steal the contraband from the luggage.
The Los Angeles Times, citing a criminal complaint from the FBI, reports that Dunn and Webb “were charged on June 9 with conspiring to distribute a controlled substance.”
“Starting in 2020, Dunn and Webb oversaw an operation where other workers were paid $2,000 or more in cash each shift—or up to $10,000 a week—to steal large quantities of marijuana from checked luggage,” the Times reports.
The San Francisco Standard, citing prosecutors in the case, that one of the airline workers approached by Dunn to join the scheme subsequently became a confidential source for law enforcement officials.
Things began to unravel for Dunn and Webb in June of 2021, when they were “robbed at gunpoint in the [San Francisco International] employee parking lot near their vehicles,” according to the San Francisco Standard.
While Dunn and Webb reported the robbery to law enforcement, they did not mention the stolen marijuana.
The Los Angeles Times reports: “Video surveillance footage from before and after the robbery showed the two men and other employees carrying 15- to 20-gallon black trash bags out of the secure area of the airport, the FBI complaint says. The video also shows Webb carrying a black trash bag, walking through the parking garage, heading toward his vehicle. Subsequent video footage from October 2022 showed the two men engaged in similar activity, taking bags of unknown contents from the secured area of the airport to their personal vehicles, according to the FBI. Contacted by law enforcement, one of the men initially denied that the contents belong to them but later recanted. A search warrant revealed that a black trash bag and two boxes contained multiple vacuumed sealed bags of what lab testing confirmed was approximately 30 pounds of marijuana, the FBI said. At least five people were involved in the operation, according to the complaint, but so far only Dunn and Webb have been charged.”
As more states legalized recreational cannabis use, restrictions on traveling with pot have also been relaxed. The Transportation Security Administration says that its “screening procedures are focused on security and are designed to detect potential threats to aviation and passengers,” adding that its officers “do not search for marijuana or other illegal drugs, but if any illegal substance is discovered during security screening, TSA will refer the matter to a law enforcement officer.”
Because airports are locally operated, officers generally defer to their local laws. In other words: if pot is legal, you’re probably good to fly with it. But travelers should be wary of the laws at their intended destination. Some airports, like O’Hare International in Chicago, have installed “amnesty boxes” for travelers to ditch their weed before flying.
“We’re not encouraging people to bring cannabis through the airports at all,” Chicago Police Department spokeswoman Maggie Huynh said in 2020, after the boxes were installed at O’Hare. “But if for some reason you have it on you, we have those amnesty boxes out there so that you can dispose of it prior to getting on the airplane.”
Source: https://hightimes.com/news/united-airlines-workers-busted-for-stealing-pot-from-checked-luggage/
New Mexico regulators fined a cannabis operator nearly $300,000 and revoked its license after the company allegedly created fake reports in the state’s traceability software.
The New Mexico Cannabis Control Division (CCD) accused marijuana manufacturer and retailer Golden Roots of 11 violations, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Golden Roots operates the The Cannabis Revolution Dispensary.
The majority of the violations are related to the Albuquerque company’s improper use of BioTrack, which has been New Mexico’s track-and-trace vendor since 2015.
The CCD alleges Golden Roots reported marijuana production only two months after it had received its vertically integrated license, according to Albuquerque Business First.
Because cannabis takes longer than two months to be cultivated, the CCD was suspicious of the report.
After inspecting the company’s premises, the CCD alleged Golden Roots reported cultivation, transportation and sales in BioTrack but wasn’t able to provide officers who inspected the site evidence that the operator was cultivating cannabis.
In April, the CCD revoked Golden Roots’ license and issued a $10,000 fine, according to the news outlet.
The company requested a hearing, which the regulator scheduled for Sept. 1.
At the hearing, the CCD testified that the company’s dried-cannabis weights in BioTrack were suspicious because they didn’t seem to accurately reflect how much weight marijuana loses as it dries.
Company employees also poorly accounted for why they were making adjustments in the system of up to 24 pounds of cannabis, making comments such as “bad” or “mistake” in the software, Albuquerque Business First reported.
Golden Roots was fined $298,972.05 – the amount regulators allege the company made selling products that weren’t properly accounted for in BioTrack.
The CCD has been cracking down on cannabis operators accused of selling products procured from out-of-state or not grown legally:
- Regulators alleged in August that Albuquerque dispensary Sawmill Sweet Leaf sold out-of-state products and didn’t have a license for extraction.
- Paradise Exotics Distro lost its license in July after regulators alleged the company sold products made in California.
Golden Roots was the first alleged rulebreaker in New Mexico to be asked to pay a large fine.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/new-mexico-cannabis-operator-fined-loses-license-for-alleged-biotrack-fraud/
Four marijuana companies, including a multistate operator, have filed a lawsuit against U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland in which they allege the federal MJ prohibition under the Controlled Substances Act is no longer constitutional.
According to the complaint, filed Thursday in U.S. District Court in Massachusetts, retailer Canna Provisions, Treevit delivery service CEO Gyasi Sellers, cultivator Wiseacre Farm and MSO Verano Holdings Corp. are all harmed by “the federal government’s unconstitutional ban on cultivating, manufacturing, distributing, or possessing intrastate marijuana.”
Verano is headquartered in Chicago but has operations in Massachusetts; the other three operators are based in Massachusetts.
The lawsuit seeks a ruling that the “Controlled Substances Act is unconstitutional as applied to the intrastate cultivation, manufacture, possession, and distribution of marijuana pursuant to state law.”
The companies want the case to go before the U.S. Supreme Court.
They hired prominent law firm Boies Schiller Flexner to represent them.
The New York-based firm’s principal is David Boies, whose former clients include Microsoft, former presidential candidate Al Gore and Elizabeth Holmes’ disgraced startup Theranos.
Similar challenges to the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) have failed.
One such challenge led to a landmark Supreme Court decision in 2005.
In Gonzalez vs. Raich, the highest court in the United States ruled in a 6-3 decision that the commerce clause of the U.S. Constitution gave Congress the power to outlaw marijuana federally, even though state laws allow the cultivation and sale of cannabis.
In the 18 years since that ruling, 23 states and the District of Columbia have legalized adult-use marijuana and the federal government has allowed a multibillion-dollar cannabis industry to thrive.
Since both Congress and the U.S. Department of Justice, currently headed by Garland, have declined to intervene in state-licensed marijuana markets, the key facts that led to the Supreme Court’s 2005 ruling “no longer apply,” Boies said in a statement Thursday.
“The Supreme Court has since made clear that the federal government lacks the authority to regulate purely intrastate commerce,” Boies said.
“Moreover, the facts on which those precedents are based are no longer true.”
Verano President Darren Weiss said in a statement the company is “prepared to bring this case all the way to the Supreme Court in order to align federal law with how Congress has acted for years.”
While the Biden administration’s push to reschedule marijuana would help solve marijuana operators’ federal tax woes, neither rescheduling nor modest Congressional reforms such as the SAFER Banking Act “solve the fundamental issue,” Weiss added.
“The application of the CSA to lawful state-run cannabis business is an unconstitutional overreach on state sovereignty that has led to decades of harm, failed businesses, lost jobs, and unsafe working conditions.”
Alabama regulators are targeting Dec. 1 to award the first batch of medical cannabis business licenses after the agency’s first two attempts were scrapped because of scoring errors and litigation.
The first licenses will be awarded to individual cultivators, delivery providers, processors, dispensaries and state testing labs, according to the Alabama Medical Cannabis Commission (AMCC).
Then, on Dec. 12, the AMCC will award licenses for vertically integrated operations, a designation set primarily for multistate operators.
Licenses are expected to be handed out 28 days after they have been awarded, so MMJ production could begin in early January, according to the Alabama Daily News.
That means MMJ products could be available for patients around early March, an AMCC spokesperson told the media outlet.
Regulators initially awarded 21 business licenses in June, only to void them after applicants alleged inconsistencies with how the applications were scored.
Then, in August, the state awarded 24 different licenses – 19 went to June recipients – only to reverse themselves again and scratch those licenses after spurned applicants filed lawsuits.
A state judge dismissed a lawsuit filed by Chicago-based MSO Verano Holdings Corp., but another lawsuit is pending.
Source: https://mjbizdaily.com/alabama-plans-to-award-medical-cannabis-licenses-dec-1/
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