Regina Liszanckie was about to head to work when she got the text from the owners of the business next door to hers: The razor-wire-topped chain-link gate and front door to her building were swinging open, and a single jar of marijuana lay on the ground beside the gate. She had been robbed.
Four months earlier, in September 2017, Liszanckie’s business, Plantworks, had joined the thousand-plus other “producer-processors” licensed to supply Washington’s burgeoning trade in recreational marijuana. She and her partner set out to grow high-end “craft” weed in 2,500 square feet of an anonymous industrial strip in Seattle’s North End. On the night of the break-in in January 2018, Plantworks had a full crop—26 pounds of high-quality dried, cured flower, worth about $52,000—ready to deliver to local cannabis shops.
The thieves, recounts Liszanckie, bypassed the live plants and headed straight for the ready-to-sell stock, cleaning it out. It was devastating.
Liszanckie asked around and discovered she was just one in a rash of growers in and around Seattle who’ve suffered similar break-ins, six of whom consented to be interviewed for this article. Their accounts followed a pattern: The burglars came in the wee hours and speedily cut the electricity to the security cameras and alarms. Sometimes they smashed through walls to get in, avoiding the alarms on the doors. Because even the legal grow operations tend to be unsigned and inconspicuously located in small warehouses and industrial strips, the noise went unnoticed. And the burglars chose their targets well: Bypassing large grow operations with highly secure, purpose-built facilities, they hit smaller, more vulnerable growers producing high-end, easy-to-move weed.
The robbers also showed an uncanny sense of timing, striking just as the growers had amassed inventories of cut, cured, ready-to-sell product worth thousands, even tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The growers began posting news of the heists on Instagram, swapping conjectures as to how the burglars knew where and when to strike. Two hypotheses emerged. The first: that an employee at a retail pot shop was either involved in the break-ins or telling the burglars whom to hit.
But as the burglaries continued, the growers came to suspect that the criminals had found another way of getting the information they needed to target vulnerable businesses offering big payoffs: The government was giving it to them.
After Washington’s residents became the first in the nation (together with Colorado’s) to vote to legalize recreational marijuana sales and possession in 2012, the state liquor board, newly renamed the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board (WLCB) adopted exhaustive rules and regulations to govern the new trade. These require that cannabis producers and processors provide much more detailed information about their activities to the state each month than other businesses are obliged to provide—things like exactly how many plants they grow and harvest by batch and strain, how much inventory they hold and how much they sell, when, to whom, for how much. Whenever they transport product, they must file cargo manifests with detailed vehicle information. “We plant a seed, we report it,” Liszanckie says. “You take a cutting, you report it. How long you dry. What the final weight was. How soon did it go out door? What did you sell, who did you sell it to, for how much? What did they mark it up to? Easily 25 percent of our time is given over to tracking.”
The state and state-licensed data firms then post much of this information online, where it is available to the public.
In other words, Liszanckie and other growers fear that this system, put in place to ensure transparency and accountability in the newly legalized industry, may also leave a data trail that leads thieves straight to their doors, right when the pickings are fattest.
“If you are a crook, it’s a veritable laundry list of targets,” says Andrew Marris, a partner in the Seattle cannabis grower Fire Bros., which lost what it says was $200,000 worth of weed to burglars last summer.
by Eric Scigliano, Politico | Read more:
Image: Owen Freeman
Four months earlier, in September 2017, Liszanckie’s business, Plantworks, had joined the thousand-plus other “producer-processors” licensed to supply Washington’s burgeoning trade in recreational marijuana. She and her partner set out to grow high-end “craft” weed in 2,500 square feet of an anonymous industrial strip in Seattle’s North End. On the night of the break-in in January 2018, Plantworks had a full crop—26 pounds of high-quality dried, cured flower, worth about $52,000—ready to deliver to local cannabis shops.
The thieves, recounts Liszanckie, bypassed the live plants and headed straight for the ready-to-sell stock, cleaning it out. It was devastating.
Liszanckie asked around and discovered she was just one in a rash of growers in and around Seattle who’ve suffered similar break-ins, six of whom consented to be interviewed for this article. Their accounts followed a pattern: The burglars came in the wee hours and speedily cut the electricity to the security cameras and alarms. Sometimes they smashed through walls to get in, avoiding the alarms on the doors. Because even the legal grow operations tend to be unsigned and inconspicuously located in small warehouses and industrial strips, the noise went unnoticed. And the burglars chose their targets well: Bypassing large grow operations with highly secure, purpose-built facilities, they hit smaller, more vulnerable growers producing high-end, easy-to-move weed.The robbers also showed an uncanny sense of timing, striking just as the growers had amassed inventories of cut, cured, ready-to-sell product worth thousands, even tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars.
The growers began posting news of the heists on Instagram, swapping conjectures as to how the burglars knew where and when to strike. Two hypotheses emerged. The first: that an employee at a retail pot shop was either involved in the break-ins or telling the burglars whom to hit.
But as the burglaries continued, the growers came to suspect that the criminals had found another way of getting the information they needed to target vulnerable businesses offering big payoffs: The government was giving it to them.
After Washington’s residents became the first in the nation (together with Colorado’s) to vote to legalize recreational marijuana sales and possession in 2012, the state liquor board, newly renamed the Washington Liquor and Cannabis Board (WLCB) adopted exhaustive rules and regulations to govern the new trade. These require that cannabis producers and processors provide much more detailed information about their activities to the state each month than other businesses are obliged to provide—things like exactly how many plants they grow and harvest by batch and strain, how much inventory they hold and how much they sell, when, to whom, for how much. Whenever they transport product, they must file cargo manifests with detailed vehicle information. “We plant a seed, we report it,” Liszanckie says. “You take a cutting, you report it. How long you dry. What the final weight was. How soon did it go out door? What did you sell, who did you sell it to, for how much? What did they mark it up to? Easily 25 percent of our time is given over to tracking.”
The state and state-licensed data firms then post much of this information online, where it is available to the public.
In other words, Liszanckie and other growers fear that this system, put in place to ensure transparency and accountability in the newly legalized industry, may also leave a data trail that leads thieves straight to their doors, right when the pickings are fattest.
“If you are a crook, it’s a veritable laundry list of targets,” says Andrew Marris, a partner in the Seattle cannabis grower Fire Bros., which lost what it says was $200,000 worth of weed to burglars last summer.
Image: Owen Freeman
