Cabin for Sale, Comes with Underground Pot Growing Rooms

[MindPilot]

It's about as isolated a spot as there is in San Diego County: A log cabin, built by drug dealers and raided by Drug Enforcement Agency special agents earlier this year. It features three bedrooms, a detached garage, and a high-tech security system. Perched atop Palomar Mountain, the cabin has sweeping views of the desert and its own private access roads that snake miles down the mountainside past trailers and rusted cars.

The garage comes with a hydraulic platform, hidden inside a closet, which drops to a 65-foot tunnel that eventually opens into a warehouse formerly used to grow hundreds of potent marijuana plants.

The log cabin will soon be for sale. The home, which once belonged to Encinitas resident Damien Andrews, is in the process of being forfeited to the U.S. government. Earlier this month, Andrews pleaded guilty to conspiracy to manufacture marijuana plants and laundering money. He was sentenced to 60 months in prison and was ordered to forfeit the cabin and his two other properties, a $1.4 million Encinitas beach house, and another home in Oceanside.

The sale of the extraordinary Santa Ysabel cabin will pose unique challenges for the U.S. Marshals Service, which oversees properties forfeited to the federal government by criminals. The Realtor chosen by the Marshals to list the property must convince buyers that the 39-acre site is a good investment, despite the fact that the cabin was built without permits and one of the bedrooms features a huge mural of an alien's head.


http://www.voiceofsandiego.org/articles/2007/08/29/news/marijuana082907.txt

[Squatch]

1. ...

The Great Tennessee Marijuana Cave

[PetrusMonsFormicarum]

3. Where are t?e munchkins

wid little Rasta beanies, mon?

[MindPilot]

4. awesome dude!

There are probably many more that nobody has ratted on yet. It's a beautiful thing.

[MadHound]

2. I might actually buy it if I lived in California

And didn't believe that forfeiture laws are illegal, immoral and unconstitutional. My guess is that the US Marshals will either disable the hydraulic platform, fill in the secret room and tunnel, or both.

Forfeiture laws are just wrong, and frankly I hope that the Marshal's service gets stuck with this one.

[fed-up]

5. great video-"The room stank," said Jeff Hamm, a local deputy sheriff who participated in the bust

[kedrys]

6. How does one "manufacture" marijuana plants?

That's a new one on me... :P

[MindPilot]

7. This is America! You can't manufacture anything...

without cheap foreign labor. Apparently it's illegal to even try.

edit: spellitude

[Oldenuff]

8. What do you wanna bet

that our Drug Czar doesn't need Viagra on the day that a bust like this happens.

[MindPilot]

9. Once met a man & wife, both DEA agents...

His comment to me: "we see recreational pot smokers as nothing more than job security." Kinda says it all. Fuckers.

BTW Your sig line is great!!