Federal authorities arrested six Chinese nationals Tuesday on charges related to human trafficking and money laundering at a ring of illegal cannabis grow houses across New England that investigators believe are owned and operated by transnational criminal organizations.
One of the men arrested is alleged to be the ringleader behind what the U.S. Attorney’s Office described as “a multi-million-dollar conspiracy” of illicit growing operations across Maine and Massachusetts that “employed Chinese nationals smuggled into the United States.” Another man is still wanted by police.
Since 2020, prosecutors allege, hundreds of single-family homes across Maine and New England have been purchased by Chinese nationals, only to be gutted and converted into industrial-scale illegal cannabis farms.
“This takedown highlights the need for a sustained law enforcement effort, across all levels, to shut down and thoroughly investigate the organized criminal enterprises behind these unlicensed and illegal operations,” FBI special agent Ted Docks said in a written statement this week.
A federal affidavit unsealed Tuesday details how the group was allegedly able to set up a massive illegal cannabis operation by smuggling in unpaid laborers from overseas and laundering millions of dollars in proceeds through cashier’s checks and real estate purchases. The document does not detail where in Maine the group was allegedly operating; the U.S. Attorney’s Office and Maine State Police did not answer questions Wednesday.
One man, Jianxiong Chen, 39, is accused of leading the conspiracy. Prosecutors allege Chen owned numerous grow house across New England and staffed them with forced laborers he arranged to have trafficked into the U.S.
“Chen smuggled Chinese nationals into the United States to work in grow houses he controlled and kept possession of their passports until they repaid him for the cost associated with smuggling them into the United States,” the federal indictment reads.
The document is the first time federal authorities have acknowledged the use of forced labor in Maine’s illegal grow houses. Prosecutors previously said they “haven’t seen evidence” that Maine’s illegal Chinese-run grow houses employ human trafficking, a notion disputed by local police and anti-trafficking advocates.
Chen’s home in Braintree, Massachusetts, served as the base for operations, according to the indictment. He sold weed by the kilogram and moved millions of dollars in proceeds, which was used to buy more houses to be converted into growing operations as well as “luxury homes, automobiles, jewelry and other items” for himself, the document alleges.
Cannabis from illegal grow houses across New England was also brought to Chen’s home before being bought, sold and distributed to street dealers, prosecutors say.
In one 2023 traffic stop, police pulled over two men tied to Chen who were leaving an illegal grow house in Greenfield, Massachusetts. At the time of the stop, one of the men, Hongbin Wu, 35, was wearing a neon green T-shirt with a design by the luxury brand Supreme depicting an iron “laundering” a sheet of dollar bills, shown in a photo included in the indictment. Police seized nearly $37,000 in suspected drug proceeds from the men, according to court records.
Chen and his associates maintained what prosecutors describe as an “East Coast contact list” for grow house owners and operators, illegal cannabis dealers and product distributors with ties to China to keep in contact with. The affidavit says they used WeChat, a messaging platform heavily monitored by the Chinese government, to communicate.
Seven men in total were indicted on various charges for their alleged roles in the operation. They are:
• Jianxiong Chen, 39, of Braintree Massachusetts: 11 counts of money laundering and single counts of money laundering conspiracy and bringing aliens into the United States.
• Yuxiong Wu, 36, of Weymouth, Massachusetts: four counts of money laundering and one count of money laundering conspiracy.
• Dinghui Li, 38, of Braintree, Massachusetts: two counts of money laundering and one count of money laundering conspiracy.
• Dechao Ma, 35, of Braintree, Massachusetts: two counts of money laundering and one count of money laundering conspiracy.
• Peng Lian Zhu, 35, of Melrose, Massachusetts: one count of money laundering conspiracy.
• Hongbin Wu, 35, of Quincy, Massachusetts: conspiracy to distribute marijuana.
• Yanrong Zhu, 47, of Greenfield, Massachusetts, and Brooklyn, New York: indicted on conspiracy to distribute marijuana.
Yanrong Zhu has not been arrested and is still wanted by law enforcement. Sentences for the charges range from five to 20 years in prison and fines up to $500,000.
The arrests come after federal authorities pledged to crack down on the hundreds of illegal Chinese-run cannabis grows in Maine, Massachusetts and elsewhere. A release this week from the Department of Justice says the case is part of “Operation Take Back America.” The investigation was carried out by a combination of federal, state and local law enforcement in Maine, Massachusetts and New York.
More than 60 illegal grow houses allegedly associated with Chinese organized crime groups have been raided by authorities across Maine since early 2024, mostly by local police. Several of those operations and hundreds more untouched by police have obtained legal cover in Maine’s medical cannabis market, one of the most loosely regulated in the country.
