Drug seizure totals have hit the $100 million mark in marijuana “grow house” operations spanning 13 Georgia counties and one location in North Carolina. Drug agents have now netted seizures in 68 grow houses and made nearly 70 arrests. The U.S. Attorney’s Office has agreed to prosecute the cases on the federal level.

Totals from the 15 most recent raids have yet to be compiled, said Fayette County Sheriff’s Drug Suppression Task Force Capt. Mike Pruitt. But the totals from raids last week after hitting 53 grow houses came in at 5,200 marijuana plants with a street value of $63.8 million, packaged marijuana valued at $8.2 million and $25.2 million in hydroponic (water-cultivated) equipment used in the grow house operations, Pruitt said.

Those seizures, totaling $97.4 million, will likely put the total over the $100 million mark once figures from the most recent 15 grow houses are tallied, Pruitt said.

Those raids have now accounted for the arrest of nearly 70 individuals, Pruitt added.

The most recent seizure was made Monday in a Barrow County location. The raid netted more than 660 marijuana plants found in the drying stage of the manufacturing process, Pruitt said.

The magnitude of the seizures across multiple jurisdictions led to a decision by the U.S. Attorney. Fayette County District Attorney Scott Ballard said he was notified Monday of the decision. The decision followed a meeting last week that included representatives of the U.S. Attorney, federal Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), Prosecuting Attorney’s Council, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), East Metro Drug Enforcement Task Force, Georgia State Patrol, Fayette Sheriff’s task force and agents from police departments and sheriff’s offices in the 12 remaining Georgia counties where seizures have occurred.

The seizures of high-quality marijuana and hydroponic (water-grown) equipment to date have been made in 68 grow houses in Coweta, Henry, Lamar, Butts, Newton, Jackson, Walton, Barrow, Gwinnett, Jasper, Rockdale and Hall counties. Pruitt said another grow house was raided in North Carolina.

“The scale of the seizures is off the chart and it just keeps growing,” said Pruitt. “Every day we just keep adding to it.”

The knowledge of the network of grow houses stemmed from information obtained from an initial investigation by Fayette County drug task force agents into the activities of 35 year-old Fayette County resident Merquides Martinez and, subsequently, his wife Blanca Botello, a Fayetteville real estate agent.

The multi-county, and now multi-state, operation had it beginnings when Fayette drug agents received a tip from the Miami DEA office.

That tip led to two months of investigative work prior to the first bust, a raid of the Martinez residence south of Fayetteville. The tip from DEA came only in the form of a name and a possible connection to drug activity, Pruitt said.

Pruitt said all the marijuana processing activities discovered in the seizures to date are the same and all appear to be linked to the activities of Martinez.

Far from finding only marijuana in the residences, agents are finding paperwork in some locations that continues lead them to additional grow houses around the metro area.

Significant in many of the raids is the theft of electricity used in the hydroponics operations. The theft of power from Georgia Power and local EMCs is a tell-tale sign because the amount of energy required to power the lighting and other equipment in a grow house is exorbitant, Pruitt said.

Company officials estimate that growers tapping on to power lines are using as much as 3,800 kilowatt hours every five days, more than 20 times the norm for a residence of that size, he said.

Pruitt said the investigation is ongoing, with agents from around Georgia looking at other areas and in other directions. With those efforts the number of seizures could change once again, Pruitt said.

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