NBC Nightly News with Tom Llamas - Nightly News Films: Captives of Cannabis Part II

Episode Date: August 4, 2023

NBC News’ Jacob Soboroff takes an in-depth look into the illegal marijuana industry across the U.S. and its potential ties to international organized crime and human trafficking. The report follows Jacob’s year-long “Captives of Cannabis” investigation.

Here. Tonight, a rare look inside a vast and sophisticated criminal network, harvesting illegal marijuana and using vulnerable migrants to do it. You haven't been paid. No. We travel to the heart of where these victims are being recruited. They came from here. Yeah.

And uncover a shocking scheme bringing together two giants of the criminal world. Hey, Sinaloa cartel, let me introduce you to Chinese organized crime. I'm Jacob Soboroff. This is Captives of Cannabis Part 2. Mass murder, migrants, and money laundering. Body, body. Multiple bodies. A shocking scene in rural Oklahoma.

Are there other people inside? Yeah. Okay. Four killed execution style and one wounded on what authorities say is an illegally operating marijuana farm. Sheriff's office! Sheriff's office! Port documents filed during the suspect's arrest said the killings were an act of revenge. We don't know where Shooter is. The alleged assailant, Chen Wu, who's now being charged with first-degree murder,

was demanding $300,000 that he claimed to have invested in the farm, according to authorities. Two of Chen's victims were listed as co-owners of the illegal grow. You got him in cuffs? The other shooting victims seem to have just been working there. All were Chinese nationals. We've got one injured and four deceased. It was just the kind of grisly murder that law enforcement officials in Oklahoma had long feared.

Jonathan Riedlinger was one of the first officers to arrive on the scene. With as much money that's coming in here, with as much marijuana is here or leaving, it just feels like it's a matter of time before something was going to happen. Oklahoma has seen an explosion of marijuana farms ever since the state voted to legalize medical cannabis in 2018, charging would-be marijuana entrepreneurs only $3,000 for a license to grow, a fraction of what other states imposed for licenses. There were a lot of businesses out of state that started looking at Oklahoma, just realizing I can save a lot of money simply moving my operation to Oklahoma. Mark Woodward is with the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and says there are over 6,400 marijuana grows in the state, far more than the legal market can support.

So many of these grows sell to the black market instead. They can grow for pennies on the dollar compared to a legitimate business and they can sell it much cheaper. So there is so much profit to be made. And according to law enforcement, it's not just run-of-the-mill entrepreneurs trying to make a go of it in America's heartland, but international criminal organizations as well. The real people moving the product, the workers, and most importantly, laundering the money, were tied to organized crime from Los Angeles to New York, from Mexico to China. On just one day in 2022, the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics raided nine marijuana farms with alleged ties to Chinese organized crime. On those farms, they say they found suspected victims of human trafficking,

men and women who were forced or coerced to work on farms for little or no pay. It's a practice that grew especially prevalent during the height of COVID, says Woodward. A lot of the workers lost their jobs during the pandemic. A lot of these states were still locked down. And so a lot of these groups started looking at Oklahoma and literally moving their criminal operations to Oklahoma. Most of these workers, I'm sure, had no idea. They were just told, you grow marijuana, you load trucks, and you'll get paid. Come here! Let's go! But many workers don't actually get paid.

You guys okay? Yeah. During our year-long investigation of this story, we've encountered dozens of suspected trafficking victims, including these workers on an illegal marijuana farm in California, who said they worked for months without a paycheck. How are you paid?

Who's paying you? They said they haven't actually gotten paid yet. You haven't been paid? No. Were the murder victims on the Oklahoma farm also trafficking victims? Or was the farm connected to a wider criminal syndicate? To search for answers, we tracked down the lone survivor of the shooting, Yifei Lin. He's the man who can be heard crying out in pain on this body cam footage.

Lin agreed to meet producer Arne Heikele at his suburban home outside of Oklahoma City, where he was recuperating from several gunshot wounds to the abdomen. I was in the hospital for two weeks, he said. I'm in a lot of pain and can barely walk. Lin revealed to Arnie that he had working relationships with Chinese associates in Brooklyn, New York and the San Gabriel Valley in Los Angeles, a telltale sign, authorities say, that he was connected to a larger criminal network harvesting and distributing illicit marijuana. Right after our meeting, Lin was arrested, charged with manufacturing and trafficking marijuana, and now awaits trial. Originally it was a dairy farm, now it's a grow farm. Dennis Banther is the sheriff of Kingfisher County, where the homicides took place.

Clear. the sheriff of Kingfisher County, where the homicides took place. He says he also started to notice an influx of Chinese people moving into the area to operate marijuana farms during the pandemic and estimates there are now 80 grows in the county of 15,000 people. The way it's going now, I see environmental problems. I see criminal problems. I think we're going to burden the court systems. We're going to burden law enforcement. Over the course of our reporting, we've learned that many Chinese workers who end up on marijuana farms in Oklahoma are recruited online. Okay, these are from Oklahoma? Oklahoma. Yeah. And many of the workers, we're told, come from this neighborhood in Brooklyn. This is the center of the Chinese neighborhood in Sunset Park. Yes. We met Yu Lin, a well-connected businessman who ran for local office in Sunset Park. As we've reported across the country

at these illegal marijuana grows, we keep hearing time and time again, people who are working there have come from Brooklyn. They've come from Queens. They've come from New York City. Came from this neighborhood as well. They came from here? Yeah.

Is that a surprise to you? It wasn't as surprising as what we might thought. And the reason being is that everybody knows the story of an acquaintance of theirs that seceded. It used to be a quick money business, and now it's hard to get that money. Meaning people aren't getting paid? No, or they don't get the investment back. When people are leaving this neighborhood to go work in marijuana grows across the country, what are you hearing that they ultimately find when they do leave?

It's unstable. It's illegal. It's not well regulated. And if you get to any kinds of conflict, there's no way to resolve it peacefully. What makes this population here particularly vulnerable to the type of exploitation that you've heard about and that we've seen? For them to come to this country from China, it takes dramatic effort to come. And they usually come here with a debt. Let's say $30,000, $50,000. They might have had to pay somebody to help them get a visa in order to come to the U.S.

and stay here, maybe illegally. Yeah. So that's what I start with. We also met a man, Ren Yi, who says he just returned to Sunset Park after several years working on a marijuana farm in Oklahoma. He says he experienced the boom and bust of the pot industry firsthand. Arnie helped translate. Why did you go to Oklahoma to work in marijuana? There was a small possibility of making money, and that's why he went.

But in actuality, he ended up losing all his money. How much money did you lose? 200,000 dollars. 200,000 dollars. In our reporting, we've seen chinese people who have gone to oklahoma and become victims of violence in the marijuana industry did you know anybody who became a victim of violence yeah yeah he's heard he's heard about violence on farms when there's that much money being invested and lost there's bound to be violence there's bound to be

people unhappy what would you tell people today from this neighborhood if they were considering to go work in marijuana fields across the country? Don't do it. Definitely don't go. Definitely don't go to Oklahoma. Coming up... Riverside County Sheriff's Department search warrant. Is that entry? We get a glimpse inside a possible international crime ring

and meet some of the workers toiling in its shadows. You're living on $500 a month? Yeah. It's early in the morning in Riverside County, California. These sheriff's deputies are about to execute a dozen search warrants on residential homes. They say they're going to find illegal marijuana grows there and victims of human trafficking working on those grows. But first, they're going to go after the leader of the operation.

After over a year of investigating black market cannabis grows and possibly trafficked Chinese migrants around the U.S., we were closing in on learning how these operations really work and who's actually in charge. Here we go. Is this person a mid-level operator, kingpin, mastermind? I would say this is a mid-level operator. We believe that the people that are ultimately in control of these grows

are not even here in the United States. We believe that they are likely in China. Search warrant. Open the door. All right. All right. All right. All right. Nice and easy. The woman right here just said that her children, 14 and 12, are still inside the house. They might be sleeping. The deputies are inside searching right now. What did you guys find in there?

We found several documents that ultimately link these suspects living in this home to several of the other locations that we've been investigating. Like what? Utility bills and some passports and things like that of people that, as far as we know, do not live at this location. Wait a minute. So there's identification for people who don't live at this house, who weren't present at this house on the property? Correct. So that's something we want to look into to find out why are those passports here and where are those people? Are they victims of human trafficking? We don't know that yet. Why is having the possession of someone else's identification a sign that you might be trafficking them? I think it's an indication that they are in

control of that person. That person isn't free to move about, you know, the country, the world. They don't have their identification. They can't get in and out of airports and places. They have no way of proving their identity to anybody. So a lot of times we see the traffickers will maintain possession of those documents as a means to control that person. The couple's arrested, but because human trafficking cases are notoriously difficult to convict, deputies shift their focus to the organized crime ring this house appears to be a part of. So that's the one we're hitting. That's the one we're hitting. And prepare to hit another location nearby. This morning they took down who they say is the ringleader of this operation. Now

they're going to actually go bust one of the grows, see if they can find some of the trafficked workers they suspect are growing all this illegal marijuana. They're in. I don't know if anybody's home. Yep. Doesn't seem like anybody's here. No, nobody's inside the house. And so what'd you find inside? This house was a grow house. That's what we would have expected it to be.

Inside, deputies seize hundreds of plants, a small part of more than 7,000 they confiscate that day, which according to the sheriff's department can fetch as much as $2 million on the black market. Though no workers were found at this location, 14 individuals from China were arrested at others. And we learned some of them are being processed at a jail nearby,

so we head there. He enters his report? Yeah. Producer Arnie Haeckel and I speak with several workers who didn't want to be identified. You're living on $500 a month. Yeah. He's the sole provider of five people

back home in China. They all rely on him for money. This man told us he lives on $500 a month and sends the rest back home to family members and to pay back the smuggler who got him here. That's not a salary to live and sustain yourself and have a life. Are you sure you're okay here? He said he would make it work by basically having one meal a day. Our understanding is that there are many people who are doing the type of work that you're doing,

but some of them are doing it under coercion or fraud or force. They're not doing it because they want to do it. They're doing it because someone's making them do it. Have you heard stories like that? He heard this happens. He says it's a very secretive world that he lives in. If he needs to go from one place to another, it's kind of arranged for him.

He doesn't know the addresses that he's going to. He doesn't know the names of the people he's working with. It's all very hidden. So some of what you do, would you say, is outside of your control? Yeah, that's fair to say. And he says sometimes he goes and does these jobs for other people, and he doesn't get money for those jobs. Like the workers we met in California, it's extremely rare for someone to self-identify as a trafficking victim, and the worker was no exception. But owing money to smugglers, not knowing where you're working, and not getting paid are all hallmarks of being trafficked, according to experts. The last person that was brought in was the suspected mid-level manager,

the guy we saw get arrested, along with his girlfriend earlier in the day. He told us he was just a handyman and denied any involvement in the illicit marijuana industry. He and everyone else were released from jail that same day. Coming up next, we uncover an elaborate and highly sophisticated money laundering operation, bringing together two giants of the criminal world. Hey, Sinaloa cartel, let me introduce you to Chinese organized crime. That's what happened.

In California, it's estimated that the black market makes up more than half of the total cannabis share in the state. An eye-opening number, but perhaps not that surprising when you consider that no matter how many illegal marijuana plants someone gets caught with, the likely penalty is just a ticket. It's a reality that's frustrating law enforcement, including Sergeant James Roy of the Riverside County Sheriff's Department. A lot of people who are busted for being involved in illegal marijuana get released within hours of being arrested because growing marijuana is legal in California. What are the odds these guys are going to get released relatively soon? Depends on what we find. The law does allow you to grow for your own personal use,

but these people are operating. At one point we had 37 locations identified that all contain anywhere from 1,000 to 2,000, 3,000 plants per location. So it is illegal for them to do that. So the odds of them getting released today are high, low? The chances that they'll be held today are probably pretty slim. So you think they might get out by the end of the day? I think so. The guy that's detained inside this car right now is responsible, or at least you suspect, for 37 different grow operations in this area. Correct, correct. And that 37, that's 37 locations that we're aware of. What are the odds that this guy's boss

is even in the United States? I think the odds are pretty good that he's not. We don't know how large this organization is, how many people are in it, but we do believe that it is global to some extent. If it is so big, how come you guys are out here alone? Where's the federal government? Where's the DEA? That's a great question.

That's a great question. To push for answers, we met Bill Bodnar, DEA's special agent in charge of Los Angeles, for an exclusive interview. In our reporting, we've seen Chinese nationals involved in the illicit cannabis trade. The law enforcement that we've been talking to says that they believe that the bosses of those operations are back in China. How is that connected to what you're seeing? The Chinese criminal organizations have such a desire for U.S. dollars in cash. They're getting into a variety of criminal enterprises to create that cash. And I'm not surprised to hear that them running cannabis grows. It's generating cash that they're then using to accomplish

capital flight out of China. In other words, the DEA says this form of organized crime is one that extends far beyond black market cannabis and is rooted in a desire for Chinese nationals in the U.S. to get their money out of China. In 2015 and 2016, when Chinese citizens sent over $1.2 trillion out of the country, the Chinese government responded by restricting the amount of money each citizen could send out of China in a single year to $50,000. If you're a wealthy Chinese national and you have money in China and you want to get it out, you want to build generational wealth, you're not trusting of the system there. That desire to get money out of China has given rise to a new and sophisticated money laundering operation right here in the U.S.

A Treasury official tells NBC News that Chinese criminal organizations are working with Mexican cartels by helping them launder money made from meth, fentanyl, and other drugs. They do so by loaning out the cartels' money to unsuspecting Chinese people like students or prospective homebuyers living in America. These criminal organizations are then repaid in Chinese currency back in China, where the money launderers buy Chinese products and have them shipped to Mexico for sale, and then pay the cartels back in pesos. In the end, no money actually crosses international borders, and the Treasury Department says the dirty dollars are, quote, disappearing into thin air. The DEA says the products money launderers are sending from

China to Mexico are deadly. Guess which product is very available in China that's not available here at all? Precursor chemicals. The drugs are synthesized in Mexico, smuggled in the United States. The drugs are sold in the United States. They're creating vast amounts of U.S. cash, and that cash is handed over to the designee of the Chinese money broker. The Chinese nationals here in the United States that are taking this cash, you're saying they're not necessarily criminals? No, they're not involved in any criminal act other than taking delivery of a huge amount of cash. What they're trying to do is they're trying to, probably for their family or to create

generational wealth, they're trying to get their money out of China here in the United States. What they may not know is that the money brokers, the people running this criminal enterprise, they're using the drug trade to accomplish that. I guess what you're saying is, and correct me if I'm wrong, sometimes that cash ends up a student using it for a university, sometimes as a down payment for a home. It could be all those things.

For you in the DEA, how do you go after stopping this from happening? Right now, I mean, our focus is 100% Sinaloa cartel, Jalisco New Generation cartel. And it's because of this synthetic drug trade. It's like nothing we've seen before. What used to be the sole domain of the Mexican drug trafficking organizations here in the wholesale district of Los Angeles is now a joint effort between China and the cartels? Hey, Sinaloa cartel, let me introduce you to Chinese organized crime. That's what happened. And by working together,

they've been able to get millions, if not billions of dollars out of China into the United States, and they've been able to use a synthetic drug trade to do it. Over the course of this investigation, we've learned that trafficked migrants and black market marijuana fit into a much larger transnational crime syndicate, where the end product is far deadlier than cannabis. But other questions remain. How much does the Chinese government know about the exporting of precursor chemicals to Mexico? And with a booming black market driving the trafficking of workers and fueling other criminal endeavors, what's being done to bring this situation under control? For these victims, these captives of cannabis, justice can't come

soon enough.