Medical pot clubs a front for drug dealers?

NY Times:

Federal authorities said Thursday that they had cracked the biggest case ever involving the use of medical marijuana dispensaries in California as a cover for international drug dealing and money laundering, which they said extended to Canada and countries in Asia.

"This organization had been operating for over four years," Javier F. Peña, the special agent in charge of the Drug Enforcement Administration in San Francisco, said at a news conference. "It is now dismantled."

In court documents unsealed here, the federal authorities accused a 33-year-old San Francisco man, Vince Ming Wan, of leading a multimillion-dollar operation in the trafficking of marijuana and Ecstasy that used three medical marijuana clubs in the city as a front.

United States Attorney Kevin V. Ryan said that an arrest warrant had been issued for Mr. Wan on charges of conspiracy to distribute more than 1,000 marijuana plants, but that he remained at large. Twenty other people, all from San Francisco and its suburbs, were charged with a variety of crimes, including conspiracy to grow and traffic in marijuana plants, conspiracy to distribute Ecstasy and conspiracy to engage in money laundering.

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