Gangland October 31st 2024

[Pmac2]

Lets go the low end 250$ bucks profit per pound.. 250×500=125k and 12 kilos of coke I'm guessing at least 10k per brick profit. That's a what 250kl. Not a bad week for mid\high level traffickers.

[CabriniGreen]

And why the fuck do they have pic of themselves with cocaine on the phone?

[CabriniGreen]

I'm trying to figure out what is this thing with the airport. Take this arrest here.....


Chicago man flew from California to O'Hare with more than $200K worth of cannabis: police
By Fox 32 Digital StaffPublished August 20, 2024 2:55pm CDTFOX 32 Chicago

CHICAGO - A Chicago man was arrested at O'Hare Airport after flying in from California with more than 40 pounds of cannabis in his luggage Saturday.


The Sacramento Sheriff's Department sent Chicago police photos of 26-year-old Rhashad Barnes and two suitcases full of cannabis.

Barnes was on United Flight 2207 from Sacramento to Chicago with 41 heat-sealed packages of crushed green leafy substance. The packages weighed 18,614 grams and had a street value of $269,024, according to police.

Officers met Barnes at baggage claim three. After he grabbed his bags, he was detained and asked what was inside. Barnes told officers the bags, which had his name on them, had "a little weed" inside.


He was arrested and charged with intent to manufacture or deliver 5,000+ grams of cannabis.

Barnes was scheduled to appear in court on Sept. 4.


I remember when this happened asking myself....." Doesn't he know you can just DRIVE to Michigan, Ann Arbor, and find all kinda grow ops and just drive the shit back to the city?"

And what is this expectation of NOT being stopped in the airport, with a BUNCH OF BAGS???!!

[Blunts]

While you are at it check Amsterdam coffee shop prices for "Cali" per gram. The margins are huge. You just are out of touch of that market. The reason the cartels set up in the US has fuck all to do with the EU / UK drug market.

You not really understanding me.

I had to go reread it...make sure...

Those amounts of drugs to me are DISTRIBUTION amounts, not really supply amounts. So their plan was to go to the UK, like by themselves.....break this shit down to GRAMS, and move it in the streets? No....my guy. They say in the article that they wanted to SPLIT between 250- 350 a pound in profit. So wholesaling, not retailing. But to me, they could make similar or the same money sending this same load to fucking Philly, or Boston, or Baltimoe or Charlotte. And just drive it there, with way less risk. This is the weird part to me......

Was this supposed to be a one off or regular thing, because what you would need isn't so much the plane, as a guy to gurantee it gets in on the other side. You need an in at an Airport, Customs, ( in Canada they call it an open door, a reliable means of import...)I'm not sure how it all works over there. What was the plan for THAT? Just put it on private planes? Whats the loophole? The article has them depending on 2 fucking strippers, and hoping the authorities believe these broads have an endless array of purses and thongs? Like...what?

And bro no one's outta touch. Like... I GROW WEED, lol. Lots of that weed is just fancy bags and jars. They can grow the same weed in warehouses and greenhouses as over here. Again, it's why I'm so miffed.......

You acting like I never heard of Strainhunters...lol

I was buying tickets of Arjans Haze 15 years ago my guy.....the fuck are they paying 30 a gram in 2024 for? They don't like Hash no more?

Dispensaries can't even really get away with that anymore.....

I forgot you were so fucken awesome. You grow weed therefore you know all. Fucken self righteous cunt.

[CabriniGreen]

While you are at it check Amsterdam coffee shop prices for "Cali" per gram. The margins are huge. You just are out of touch of that market. The reason the cartels set up in the US has fuck all to do with the EU / UK drug market.

You not really understanding me.

I had to go reread it...make sure...

Those amounts of drugs to me are DISTRIBUTION amounts, not really supply amounts. So their plan was to go to the UK, like by themselves.....break this shit down to GRAMS, and move it in the streets? No....my guy. They say in the article that they wanted to SPLIT between 250- 350 a pound in profit. So wholesaling, not retailing. But to me, they could make similar or the same money sending this same load to fucking Philly, or Boston, or Baltimoe or Charlotte. And just drive it there, with way less risk. This is the weird part to me......

Was this supposed to be a one off or regular thing, because what you would need isn't so much the plane, as a guy to gurantee it gets in on the other side. You need an in at an Airport, Customs, ( in Canada they call it an open door, a reliable means of import...)I'm not sure how it all works over there. What was the plan for THAT? Just put it on private planes? Whats the loophole? The article has them depending on 2 fucking strippers, and hoping the authorities believe these broads have an endless array of purses and thongs? Like...what?

And bro no one's outta touch. Like... I GROW WEED, lol. Lots of that weed is just fancy bags and jars. They can grow the same weed in warehouses and greenhouses as over here. Again, it's why I'm so miffed.......

You acting like I never heard of Strainhunters...lol

I was buying tickets of Arjans Haze 15 years ago my guy.....the fuck are they paying 30 a gram in 2024 for? They don't like Hash no more?

Dispensaries can't even really get away with that anymore.....

I forgot you were so fucken awesome. You grow weed therefore you know all. Fucken self righteous cunt.

Lol...thats your response huh? I actually tried to make a point to not be nasty about it..... Ima ignore it, because what I really don't get is this plane shit....

Yall remember Juiceworld? The rapper? He panicked because they had a bunch of pounds on a PJ right? What is this expectation to get this shit in so easy? So I can put a suitcase with contraband anything...fuckin Uranium on a PJ and it doesn't get stopped because it's a PJ?


Does this seem right?

The plane pulls up on the tarmac, and Customs immediately pulls up. So......what was the plan? Hope they don't check the thongs?

[CabriniGreen]

Lets go the low end 250$ bucks profit per pound.. 250×500=125k and 12 kilos of coke I'm guessing at least 10k per brick profit. That's a what 250kl. Not a bad week for mid\high level traffickers.

I mean check this out bro...... there is no reason in 2024 to tunnel vision on Cali weed. And they absolutely coulda made the same money on the East Coast, with no damn plane just trucks.... I know it's just a TV show..... but the mob might wanna send a couple of motherfuckers to Tulsa...lmao




Oklahoma-grown marijuana fuels the black market in other states
By Garrett Yalch The Frontier Aug 12, 2023

One evening in mid-July, state drug enforcement agents intercepted a semi-truck leaving an Oklahoma City warehouse bound for New York. The truck was hauling 7,000 pounds of Oklahoma-grown marijuana, concealed in produce boxes, which would have been worth about $28 million on the East Coast. The same amount of marijuana would only go for $6 million in Oklahoma’s legal market, according to law enforcement estimates.

Before it was shut down, investigators said multiple truckloads would depart the warehouse every week, headed for other states, according to Mark Woodward, spokesman for the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs.

The bureau is actively investigating several similar operations, he said.

Oklahoma’s loose oversight of its medical marijuana program, coupled with cheap land and licensing fees, has sparked an influx of illicit grow operations that has overwhelmed law enforcement.

“We’ve been told we are now the number-one supplier of black market marijuana in the country,” Woodward said, citing information from agencies around the U.S.

Over the past two years, the Bureau of Narcotics has shut down nearly 1,000 illicit marijuana grow operations across Oklahoma, but as many as 5,000 more may remain, according to Woodward and other officials.

Last year, state lawmakers attempted to contain the problem by enacting a moratorium on new grower licenses and raising fees, but officials say Oklahoma is still catching up on enforcement after a successful citizen-led effort to legalize medical use in 2018 led to a massive marijuana boom.

Even though the number of growers peaked in 2021, Oklahoma is still producing 64 times more cannabis than is needed to meet demand for legal marijuana within the state, according to research published in June by the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority. Some of this oversupply may be frozen to be sold legally at a later date, but much of it is fueling black market sales out of state, according to the report.

Michael Sofis, co-author of the report, estimated that Oklahoma’s oversupply is at least five times larger than any he’s observed in other places, including Oregon, which made headlines in 2019 for a similar problem.

The Bureau of Narcotics has traced Oklahoma-grown marijuana to almost every state and is currently investigating over 3,000 farms. Law enforcement officials said most of these grows are operated by foreign criminal organizations — many of which make use of indentured labor, spray their plants with dangerous pesticides, and illegally move marijuana across state lines.

A thriving U.S. black market

“No trespassing” and “beware of dogs” signs line the fence at one large marijuana grow situated on the Canadian River near the town of Wayne. Tightly-packed rows of marijuana seedlings could be seen in one greenhouse on the day Frontier reporters visited.

The out-of-state operators came to Oklahoma for one reason:

“Money,” said one farm worker, chuckling.

The man, who didn’t give his name and spoke limited English, said he had moved from China to Oakland, Calif., and then to Oklahoma to work in the marijuana industry.

He said many operations have more than doubled their returns by moving to Oklahoma from other states, as he wrote down figures on a napkin to illustrate his point.

Attempts to contact the owner of the grow operation near Wayne were unsuccessful.

Even though recreational marijuana has been legalized in 23 states, growers can still make more money shipping their product out of Oklahoma because higher prices and stringent regulations in other states have allowed the black market to continue to prosper.

“Oklahoma should blame other states that have made it so difficult for legal weed to survive,” said Robin Goldstein, professor of agricultural economics at the University of California, Davis and co-author of Can Legal Weed Win?. “Illegal growers in Oklahoma are only able to thrive and exist because, in those other states, legal weed is so expensive.”

Before many states legalized recreational use, legal medical marijuana was much cheaper, Goldstein said. But legal recreational marijuana brought higher taxes and more regulations with it, making it harder for legal growers and sellers to compete with the black market. For example, New York — which is one of the top destinations for Oklahoma marijuana, according to the Bureau of Narcotics — implemented a new tax on marijuana after legalizing recreational use in 2021.

With some of the cheapest agricultural land in the country, comparatively low licensing fees, and a lack of pandemic restrictions on travel, Oklahoma was one of the most inexpensive places to grow marijuana in the U.S. when growers began coming in droves in late 2020.

Before the state enacted a moratorium on grow licenses in 2022, growers only needed to pay $3,000 in licensing fees.


Many states, including Arkansas and Missouri, allow only a handful of licensed growers and have much higher fees. Arkansas law allows only eight companies to grow statewide and each of them must pay the state $100,000 annually.

Oklahoma law also requires that at least 75% ownership of a medical marijuana operation be held by an Oklahoma resident who has lived in the state for over two years. But out-of-state and foreign groups were able to hire law firms or pay individual residents to become “straw owners,” bypassing this requirement.

The heads of two law firms, Yukon-based Stacy Legal Group and Tulsa-based Jones-Brown Law face felony drug and conspiracy charges after putting themselves, their employees or other residents down as the majority owners of hundreds of grows. All have pleaded not guilty.

Criminal growers have been able to become nearly indistinguishable from legal growers on paper by acquiring licenses, helping them evade law enforcement, said Andrew Livingston, Director of Economics and Research at Vicente LLP, a cannabis law firm headquartered in Denver.

Given this advantage and the low barriers to get a license, police say they’ve found very few grows in Oklahoma that are unlicensed.

“Our licenses are so cheap and so easy to gain,” Woodward said, “that most are not going to risk it when they can just go get a license and hide in plain sight.”

Thousands of operations with fraudulent licenses are still operating, he added.

Oklahoma also requires grows to have unique tags on every plant from “seed to sale.” This tracking system is designed to enable fine-grained product recalls if contaminants like banned pesticides or heavy metals are detected. But they are also used for enforcement purposes. If a grow has plants that are untagged, the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority will use that as a signal to investigate the grow further, said Porsha Riley, a spokeswoman for the agency.

However, Woodward says most illegal grows have these tags to pass state inspections.

“But that doesn’t stop them from taking the tags off in the middle of the night and moving all that product to an Oklahoma City warehouse so it can be shipped out of state,” he said.

Lack of state funding for enforcement

The Bureau of Narcotics only has around 30 marijuana enforcement agents statewide dedicated to investigating Oklahoma’s thousands of grow operations, although state narcotics agents focused on other investigations sometimes also end up helping.

“Even our enforcement agents that are working on meth, cocaine, fentanyl, and other types of drugs are intercepting shipments during the course of their other investigations that are linked back to these marijuana grows,” Woodward said. “So our entire agency is overwhelmed by this.”

State law enforcement also assists federal agencies in investigating and prosecuting black-market sellers.

Twelve prosecutors, fewer than half of district attorney offices around the state, have their own drug task force investigators funded by federal programs. But these agents investigate illicit marijuana on top of the ongoing fentanyl crisis and other drug crimes, said Jack Thorp, district attorney for Adair, Cherokee, Wagoner and Sequoyah counties.

Earlier this year, the Oklahoma Legislature approved raising fees for marijuana growers from $500 to $2,500. This will increase the Bureau of Narcotics’ revenue by $6 million to $8 million dollars per year, but the money will only sustain the agency’s current size and will not be enough to immediately add additional agents, Woodward said.

“We’re hoping to continue to hire additional investigators to deal with this,” he said. “But we need to see what’s available and what we’re financially capable of going forward.”

In 2022, the Legislature also created a fund for county sheriffs to help take on illegal grows. Sen. Darrell Weaver, R-Moore, Senate sponsor of the bill that created the fund, is also the former director of the Bureau of Narcotics. Weaver said state drug agents have limited resources and need support from local sheriff’s deputies to cover rural parts of the state.

“They’re at ground zero. They’re the boots on the ground,” Weaver said.

Oklahoma sheriffs had hoped the Legislature would send between $5 million and $13 million to the fund. But all funding requests have been denied.

Sen. Roger Thompson, R-Okemah, chairman of the Senate appropriations committee, has blocked the funding because he says it wasn’t clear how sheriffs would use the money.

Ray McNair, director of the Oklahoma Sheriffs’ Association, said the funding would have been used to allow “deputies to work overtime locating and assisting state agencies with the eradication of illegal grow operations.”

.

[TSNYC]

Thanks for posting. So the Traina crew is westchester based. Good GL

That part surprised me. Joe Traina lived in Staten Island a long time before moving to NJ. His brother Mario lives in Staten Island. Always figured these guys would all mostly be around SI, Brooklyn. His brother Mario works at the hunts produce market

[SonnyBlackstein]

Lets go the low end 250$ bucks profit per pound.. 250×500=125k and 12 kilos of coke I'm guessing at least 10k per brick profit. That's a what 250kl. Not a bad week for mid\high level traffickers.

Youre forgetting the small cost of a private jet.
And a couple o hookers.

[Brovelli]

Thanks for posting. So the Traina crew is westchester based. Good GL

That part surprised me. Joe Traina lived in Staten Island a long time before moving to NJ. His brother Mario lives in Staten Island. Always figured these guys would all mostly be around SI, Brooklyn. His brother Mario works at the hunts produce market

I have no reason to know better or otherwise but I also thought that was strange. A lot of the old locascio crew got arrested a few years back so could’ve needed some temporary leadership but I think they’re all out now

[gohnjotti]

Lets go the low end 250$ bucks profit per pound.. 250×500=125k and 12 kilos of coke I'm guessing at least 10k per brick profit. That's a what 250kl. Not a bad week for mid\high level traffickers.

Youre forgetting the small cost of a private jet.
And a couple o hookers.

Agreed, Sonny ^

It seems to me like a group of mid-level dealers came across an opportunity to move some stuff to the UK (where the weed is shit, and therefore good weed is expensive), and then attempted to wrangle up further clients in order to make the trip worthwhile. I will point to this quote from Gang Land:

"Find us clients that need transpo to uk and you and I will be wacking up $250-350 (a) pound," the text said. The prosecutors stated that Petrosillo ended his text with: "Oh and the client is welcome to fly with us on the PJ [i.e., private jet] and can have regular luggage for his paperwork (meaning he can fly clean on same the work is on)."

It's not about whether it's the most efficient scheme in the world, it's about whether it can make money. And they decided, after networking with further clients who needed stuff moved to U.K., that it would net a healthy profit. They were also clearly under the impression that private jets were less screened than commercial flights. I believe there is some truth to that, but they clearly over-estimated how much they could sneak through.

People who lament the logic behind this scheme need to give less credit to professional criminals and realize that not everybody is a criminal mastermind.

I haven't read anymore into this case than the Gang Land article so maybe I'm wrong in my analysis. But I can attest that weed in the U.K. is "shite" (as Brits would say), and the $250-$350USD mark-up per pound makes economic sense. I know many Europeans who grew up smoking Moroccan hash because the weed was so shit.

[gohnjotti]

While you are at it check Amsterdam coffee shop prices for "Cali" per gram. The margins are huge. You just are out of touch of that market. The reason the cartels set up in the US has fuck all to do with the EU / UK drug market.

You not really understanding me.

I had to go reread it...make sure...

Those amounts of drugs to me are DISTRIBUTION amounts, not really supply amounts. So their plan was to go to the UK, like by themselves.....break this shit down to GRAMS, and move it in the streets? No....my guy. They say in the article that they wanted to SPLIT between 250- 350 a pound in profit. So wholesaling, not retailing. But to me, they could make similar or the same money sending this same load to fucking Philly, or Boston, or Baltimoe or Charlotte. And just drive it there, with way less risk. This is the weird part to me......

Was this supposed to be a one off or regular thing, because what you would need isn't so much the plane, as a guy to gurantee it gets in on the other side. You need an in at an Airport, Customs, ( in Canada they call it an open door, a reliable means of import...)I'm not sure how it all works over there. What was the plan for THAT? Just put it on private planes? Whats the loophole? The article has them depending on 2 fucking strippers, and hoping the authorities believe these broads have an endless array of purses and thongs? Like...what?

And bro no one's outta touch. Like... I GROW WEED, lol. Lots of that weed is just fancy bags and jars. They can grow the same weed in warehouses and greenhouses as over here. Again, it's why I'm so miffed.......

You acting like I never heard of Strainhunters...lol

I was buying tickets of Arjans Haze 15 years ago my guy.....the fuck are they paying 30 a gram in 2024 for? They don't like Hash no more?

Dispensaries can't even really get away with that anymore.....

When you grow up on only hash, it quickly loses it's muster. From what I've heard

[Blunts]

Lets go the low end 250$ bucks profit per pound.. 250×500=125k and 12 kilos of coke I'm guessing at least 10k per brick profit. That's a what 250kl. Not a bad week for mid\high level traffickers.

Youre forgetting the small cost of a private jet.
And a couple o hookers.

Agreed, Sonny ^

It seems to me like a group of mid-level dealers came across an opportunity to move some stuff to the UK (where the weed is shit, and therefore good weed is expensive), and then attempted to wrangle up further clients in order to make the trip worthwhile. I will point to this quote from Gang Land:

"Find us clients that need transpo to uk and you and I will be wacking up $250-350 (a) pound," the text said. The prosecutors stated that Petrosillo ended his text with: "Oh and the client is welcome to fly with us on the PJ [i.e., private jet] and can have regular luggage for his paperwork (meaning he can fly clean on same the work is on)."

It's not about whether it's the most efficient scheme in the world, it's about whether it can make money. And they decided, after networking with further clients who needed stuff moved to U.K., that it would net a healthy profit. They were also clearly under the impression that private jets were less screened than commercial flights. I believe there is some truth to that, but they clearly over-estimated how much they could sneak through.

People who lament the logic behind this scheme need to give less credit to professional criminals and realize that not everybody is a criminal mastermind.

I haven't read anymore into this case than the Gang Land article so maybe I'm wrong in my analysis. But I can attest that weed in the U.K. is "shite" (as Brits would say), and the $250-$350USD mark-up per pound makes economic sense. I know many Europeans who grew up smoking Moroccan hash because the weed was so shit.

Precisely. These guys were Nine Trey Bloods. They live from hustle to hustle aren't the cream of the trafficking crop. This was a decent short term gain opportunity in their eyes. They likely weren't too low key about it but this sort of play happens every day. Not everything is a long term trafficking setup. They also don't give too much of a fuck about jail. Guys of that status in the gang will do just fine as has been proven by their past stints. They hustle and this was just a hustle they fucked up. Profit margins were there and decent despite what some choose to believe.

[CabriniGreen]

Lets go the low end 250$ bucks profit per pound.. 250×500=125k and 12 kilos of coke I'm guessing at least 10k per brick profit. That's a what 250kl. Not a bad week for mid\high level traffickers.

Youre forgetting the small cost of a private jet.
And a couple o hookers.

Agreed, Sonny ^

It seems to me like a group of mid-level dealers came across an opportunity to move some stuff to the UK (where the weed is shit, and therefore good weed is expensive), and then attempted to wrangle up further clients in order to make the trip worthwhile. I will point to this quote from Gang Land:

"Find us clients that need transpo to uk and you and I will be wacking up $250-350 (a) pound," the text said. The prosecutors stated that Petrosillo ended his text with: "Oh and the client is welcome to fly with us on the PJ [i.e., private jet] and can have regular luggage for his paperwork (meaning he can fly clean on same the work is on)."

It's not about whether it's the most efficient scheme in the world, it's about whether it can make money. And they decided, after networking with further clients who needed stuff moved to U.K., that it would net a healthy profit. They were also clearly under the impression that private jets were less screened than commercial flights. I believe there is some truth to that, but they clearly over-estimated how much they could sneak through.

People who lament the logic behind this scheme need to give less credit to professional criminals and realize that not everybody is a criminal mastermind.

I haven't read anymore into this case than the Gang Land article so maybe I'm wrong in my analysis. But I can attest that weed in the U.K. is "shite" (as Brits would say), and the $250-$350USD mark-up per pound makes economic sense. I know many Europeans who grew up smoking Moroccan hash because the weed was so shit.

Precisely. These guys were Nine Trey Bloods. They live from hustle to hustle aren't the cream of the trafficking crop. This was a decent short term gain opportunity in their eyes. They likely weren't too low key about it but this sort of play happens every day. Not everything is a long term trafficking setup. They also don't give too much of a fuck about jail. Guys of that status in the gang will do just fine as has been proven by their past stints. They hustle and this was just a hustle they fucked up. Profit margins were there and decent despite what some choose to believe.

Man.... yall really doing mental gymnastics tyna make this Italian look some kinda smart...lol. It was HIS hairbrained scheme.. if you can't get the shit into the country, you ain't making any money. They moving like importers but thinking like distributors. The main thing they needed to be focused on was getting the stuff in, having a hook at the airport, not depending on the agents or whomever to be simps who see a pretty girl and forget to do their jobs. I swear this Italian must listen to Hip Hop. He hits up the Bloods to move some loud packs, gets a private plane with the pounds on the plane, WITH Bad Bitches on it...lmao. I aint even really address the pics of himself with the cocaine....

@Blunts

You mentioned Mail order. Okay. Fine. So why didn't they mail the shit to themselves? Why a Private Plane? Wheres the hook at the airport or customs? I bought a lot of seeds in the late 2000s from Amsterdam, I can tell you a FEW packages got intercepted by Customs, green tape and all. But apparently weed is being shipped through the mail all over. I've been known this. Why didn't they do that?

These dudes don't "make a play" to sell drugs in Liverpool everyday dude. They make plays to cop Cali weed and sell it in the Continental U.S. like come on now....you just said they ain't big time......

I posted that article about the Chicago dude tryna bring the weed back on a plane. My question is....WHY PLANES AND NOT TRUCKS? Or ....indeed, the mail service. Like international or not, these dudes are getting caught up by using these planes.

Also note the article I posted about the Bears player who ordered 10 kilos of coke and 1000 pounds of weed. That's like, a local ass amount. That amount could be moved in practically any East Coast city, DEFINITLY one with an established Gang network of Bloods or even Peoples. Without the risk of an international flight or Customs and all that.

It's really backwards. You got Foreign criminals coming over here, getting cheap liscenses, setting up corporate infrastructure growing weed legally and shipping it all over by wholesale volume.. These guys are buying weed here, and trying to walk it into another country. The same opportunities for arbitrage trading are still there in the US, look at the Oklahoma article....


We might have to agree to disagree.

[gohnjotti]

Man.... yall really doing mental gymnastics tyna make this Italian look some kinda smart...lol. It was HIS hairbrained scheme.. if you can't get the shit into the country, you ain't making any money. They moving like importers but thinking like distributors. The main thing they needed to be focused on was getting the stuff in, having a hook at the airport, not depending on the agents or whomever to be simps who see a pretty girl and forget to do their jobs. I swear this Italian must listen to Hip Hop. He hits up the Bloods to move some loud packs, gets a private plane with the pounds on the plane, WITH Bad Bitches on it...lmao. I aint even really address the pics of himself with the cocaine....

Agreed.

[Blunts]

Lets go the low end 250$ bucks profit per pound.. 250×500=125k and 12 kilos of coke I'm guessing at least 10k per brick profit. That's a what 250kl. Not a bad week for mid\high level traffickers.

Youre forgetting the small cost of a private jet.
And a couple o hookers.

Agreed, Sonny ^

It seems to me like a group of mid-level dealers came across an opportunity to move some stuff to the UK (where the weed is shit, and therefore good weed is expensive), and then attempted to wrangle up further clients in order to make the trip worthwhile. I will point to this quote from Gang Land:

"Find us clients that need transpo to uk and you and I will be wacking up $250-350 (a) pound," the text said. The prosecutors stated that Petrosillo ended his text with: "Oh and the client is welcome to fly with us on the PJ [i.e., private jet] and can have regular luggage for his paperwork (meaning he can fly clean on same the work is on)."

It's not about whether it's the most efficient scheme in the world, it's about whether it can make money. And they decided, after networking with further clients who needed stuff moved to U.K., that it would net a healthy profit. They were also clearly under the impression that private jets were less screened than commercial flights. I believe there is some truth to that, but they clearly over-estimated how much they could sneak through.

People who lament the logic behind this scheme need to give less credit to professional criminals and realize that not everybody is a criminal mastermind.

I haven't read anymore into this case than the Gang Land article so maybe I'm wrong in my analysis. But I can attest that weed in the U.K. is "shite" (as Brits would say), and the $250-$350USD mark-up per pound makes economic sense. I know many Europeans who grew up smoking Moroccan hash because the weed was so shit.

Precisely. These guys were Nine Trey Bloods. They live from hustle to hustle aren't the cream of the trafficking crop. This was a decent short term gain opportunity in their eyes. They likely weren't too low key about it but this sort of play happens every day. Not everything is a long term trafficking setup. They also don't give too much of a fuck about jail. Guys of that status in the gang will do just fine as has been proven by their past stints. They hustle and this was just a hustle they fucked up. Profit margins were there and decent despite what some choose to believe.

Man.... yall really doing mental gymnastics tyna make this Italian look some kinda smart...lol. It was HIS hairbrained scheme.. if you can't get the shit into the country, you ain't making any money. They moving like importers but thinking like distributors. The main thing they needed to be focused on was getting the stuff in, having a hook at the airport, not depending on the agents or whomever to be simps who see a pretty girl and forget to do their jobs. I swear this Italian must listen to Hip Hop. He hits up the Bloods to move some loud packs, gets a private plane with the pounds on the plane, WITH Bad Bitches on it...lmao. I aint even really address the pics of himself with the cocaine....

@Blunts

You mentioned Mail order. Okay. Fine. So why didn't they mail the shit to themselves? Why a Private Plane? Wheres the hook at the airport or customs? I bought a lot of seeds in the late 2000s from Amsterdam, I can tell you a FEW packages got intercepted by Customs, green tape and all. But apparently weed is being shipped through the mail all over. I've been known this. Why didn't they do that?

These dudes don't "make a play" to sell drugs in Liverpool everyday dude. They make plays to cop Cali weed and sell it in the Continental U.S. like come on now....you just said they ain't big time......

I posted that article about the Chicago dude tryna bring the weed back on a plane. My question is....WHY PLANES AND NOT TRUCKS? Or ....indeed, the mail service. Like international or not, these dudes are getting caught up by using these planes.

Also note the article I posted about the Bears player who ordered 10 kilos of coke and 1000 pounds of weed. That's like, a local ass amount. That amount could be moved in practically any East Coast city, DEFINITLY one with an established Gang network of Bloods or even Peoples. Without the risk of an international flight or Customs and all that.

It's really backwards. You got Foreign criminals coming over here, getting cheap liscenses, setting up corporate infrastructure growing weed legally and shipping it all over by wholesale volume.. These guys are buying weed here, and trying to walk it into another country. The same opportunities for arbitrage trading are still there in the US, look at the Oklahoma article....


We might have to agree to disagree.

I'd have a better time trying to reason with a plank of wood. You don't have to agree with the path they took but they did. They are dumb cunts. Kinda like you. People do hair brained unexplainable shit each day. They thought they were Tony fucken Montana in their minds and they were high rollers in a private jet. This is their mindset man. They don't think shit through fully and think they are invicible most of the time. Until reality checks in of course. They were a bunch of wannabe smugglers who got busted in a hustle. What is so hard to understand about that. The numbers you run don't add up? Oh I forgot you grow weed therefore are the master criminal.