Belgrade home raided for illegal marijuana operation back on market for $388,000

BELGRADE — One of the first illegal marijuana “grow houses” raided in Maine is back on the market.

An illicit cannabis growing operation was busted Jan. 2 at 24 Guptill Road as Maine State Police troopers confiscated more than 1,500 cannabis plants from inside the house and arrested one man, Yuequan Chen, 44, of Massachusetts.

After sitting vacant for nearly nine months since the raid, 24 Guptill Road is now listed for sale at $388,000.

The raid was one of the first in Maine cracking down on what authorities say are hundreds of illegal grow sites linked to Chinese transnational criminal groups. Since then, police have raided dozens more homes, many of which have been found in poor condition, raising questions among local officials over whether the houses would be ever be ready for occupancy again.

In Belgrade, the four-bedroom, two-bathroom home had been nearly entirely hollowed out to make way for a “large-scale marijuana growing operation hidden from plain view,” according to a police affidavit.

Industrial-scale lighting equipment, several heat pumps and elaborate growing systems were installed throughout the home to yield a massive cannabis crop, according to police. Potent fertilizers and numerous tubs of potting soil were also found on the property.

Photos from online property listings show repainted walls, new carpets and other renovations made to the house, which has been put back on the market, with Yuli “Lilly” Huang of Auburn listed as the real estate agent.

None of about a half-dozen online listings for the property make any mention of the house’s previous use or tenant, though Huang said she will inform potential buyers of the home’s history.

Huang said the home has undergone a monthslong renovation at the behest of the property owner, Yingci Mei of Brooklyn, New York.

Interior walls that had been torn down to make way for grow lights and tables were rebuilt, while floors and carpets were torn up before being replaced, Huang said.

“I put in a disclosure that says it was a marijuana growth facility before,” she said.

Mei has owned the land since 2021, according to public records, when the property was listed for sale at $325,000.

Nearly all the owners of alleged grow houses busted so far have listed residences in Massachusetts, New York or California, according to both federal prosecutors and public property records.

A police affidavit written after the Belgrade raid noted that “this is common for these illegal marijuana growing residences to be owned by someone who does not live on-site.”

‘VERY POOR CONDITIONS’

In court filings, both the Kennebec County Sheriff’s Office and Maine State Police say they received “multiple calls for service regarding the possibility of an illegal marijuana growing operation at (24 Guptill Road.)”

Neighbors frequently complained of the constant scent of marijuana, the appearance of industrial-grade electrical equipment, and growing piles of empty fertilizer containers outside the home, per a police affidavit.

There have now been roughly 40 illegal marijuana grows busted across rural Maine, police say. Conditions inside the homes have been described as “uninhabitable” and “abhorrent” by authorities present at the raids.

The grow sites are often filled with black mold as a result of the high humidity and warm temperatures needed to efficiently grow marijuana, according to Andrew Lizotte, the assistant U.S. attorney who is leading the federal investigation into the illegal grow houses.

Federal authorities have moved to seize four Maine properties they say housed illegal cannabis growing operations, though not the one at 24 Guptill Road.

The home in Belgrade passed a series of air and water quality tests since being renovated, Huang said, though an inspection of the property found heightened levels of mold both inside and outside the home.

Inside each of the illegal grow houses busted so far, the living space for as many as three or four workers typically is confined into one room, often the kitchen, while large-scale heating, lighting and ventilation systems are installed in the sites to accommodate the growth of thousands of marijuana plants.

Many of the grow sites have been found using carcinogenic and corrosive chemicals for both the growing and processing of illegal marijuana, though police affidavits and court records do not make specific mention of such materials at 24 Guptill Road.

“These are places that are gutted and full of black mold,” Lizotte said, speaking in general about the houses raided thus far. “Very, very poor conditions. Using fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides, and that’s not how legitimate business is done.”

While electrical modifications and mold infestations have been found inside grow houses across the state, it remains unclear what conditions were like inside 24 Guptill Road both before and after the raid.

Belgrade does not require building permits for renovation or electrical work, according to the town’s code enforcement officer, Hans Rasmussen, nor does it mandate air and water quality testing — making specifics about the home’s modifications difficult to parse.

“I can’t speak to what was done or the quality of the work that has been done, electrical or otherwise,” he said. “It’s outside the scope of my responsibilities.”

Rasmussen said he toured the property after it was renovated, and while he didn’t see electrical hazards or mold inside, he did note the lingering scent of cannabis and potting soil.

The home’s original carpeting remained in the basement, Rasmussen said, where authorities found a massive growing operation. Rather than ripping up the marijuana- and fertilizer-drenched carpet, Rasmussen said, Mei opted to put linoleum over top of it to reduce the lingering smell.

Maine law does not specifically require real estate agents to share a home’s history or previous tenants before it is sold, but does require the disclosure of “prior removal of hazardous materials or elements.”

No mentions of hazardous materials appear on Huang’s listings for 24 Guptill Road across roughly a half-dozen real estate websites. Huang said that there were not hazardous materials removed from the property.

OUT-OF-STATE BUYERS

The operation at 24 Guptill Road was part of a network of illegal grow sites across rural Maine within single-family homes that is being operated by Chinese transnational criminal groups, according to state prosecutors.

Huang, whose real estate agent profile notes she is fluent in English, Mandarin, Cantonese and Taiwanese, said she often works with out-of-state buyers who speak little English and are unfamiliar with Maine’s real estate market.

“Because I speak Chinese, they get a hold of me and say they want me to sell,” Huang said.

Huang claims that Mei told her he had a license to grow up to 500 square feet worth of medical cannabis inside the house.

“I didn’t know they were involved with the illegal growing of marijuana, and then I asked him for the paperwork that’s been done,” Huang said. “I know that it’s very common in Maine, a lot of people grow the marijuana at home, but this one just grew more than the law allowed.”

An affidavit from the January raid says the Maine Department of Agriculture, Conservation and Forestry confirmed no such licenses were given to Mei or 24 Guptill Road.

Very few grow houses busted in Maine are owned or staffed by in-state residents. While the warrant for the raid in January was written for the property owner, police instead found and arrested Yuequan Chen inside the residence.

The grow houses exhibit signs of human trafficking, with local law enforcement and grow house workers both reporting laborers are brought to and from the sites against their will, sometimes without any pay from those who brought them there.

Chen told officers when he was arrested in January that he did not live at the house, only that “he had been sent to work at that address,” according to state prosecutors. Chen had immigrated legally to the United States from China, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement confirmed after his arrest.

Chen’s defense lawyer, Andrew Boulanger, said in a court hearing days after his arrest that Chen has no permanent residence in the United States and thus house arrest could not be stipulated as a condition of his bail. Superior Court Judge Julia Lipez agreed while presiding over the case in January.

Claims of human trafficking are disputed by federal investigators, who maintain that their investigations have found no evidence of labor trafficking within the cannabis grow houses in Maine.

Chen was released Jan. 4 on $3,060 cash bail after spending two days in the Kennebec County jail in Augusta.