A Rangeley man’s request for an acquittal and a new trial related to his operation of a large illicit marijuana operation has been denied by a U.S. District Court judge.

Lucas Sirois, 45, was found guilty on Nov. 18, 2025, after a five-day trial in Bangor on charges of conspiracy to distribute controlled substances, possession with intent to distribute controlled substances, two counts of tax fraud, one count of bank fraud, and three counts of maintaining drug-involved premises in Farmington and Avon.

Sirois faces at least 10 years and up to life in prison, and up to a $10 million fine for some charges, while others carry a lesser sentence. He awaits sentencing in the late spring or early summer.

“The judge’s decision is no surprise,” Sirois’ defense attorney, Timothy Parlatore, of Washington, D.C., said.

Parlatore was Sirois’ attorney at the start of the case, before Sirois chose two different lawyers to defend him leading up to and during the trial. Both those lawyers have withdrawn.

Parlatore said his client plans to appeal the case after sentencing based on different evidence. He filed a motion for supplemental evidence to be submitted earlier this year but it was not accepted.

The request for acquittal and for a new trial stem from disagreement over the federal testing procedures done on marijuana and other issues. Sirois claims he was growing hemp.

Judge Lance Walker wrote in his denial order that “he ruled in advance of trial that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration testing procedures were sufficiently reliable for use at trial.” Defendants were allowed to argue this point.

“Considering the evidence in the light most favorable to the verdict, I cannot conclude that no rational jury would have been able to find beyond a reasonable doubt that the substance involved in the defendants’ conduct was marijuana,” Walker wrote. “Nor can I say that defendants’ concerns about the DEA’s procedures, which were allowed to be presented to the jury in abundant detail and which were in fact so presented, warrant a new trial.”

Prosecutors said that “from at least 2016 through July 2020, Lucas Sirois ran a cultivation and distribution operation producing well in excess of 17,000 pounds of marijuana from just one of several industrial grow locations.”

 During the trial, “tax preparer Kenneth Allen of Farmington who previously pleaded guilty to his part in the scheme, testified that at Sirois’s direction, he created false transactions among Sirois’ companies in order to zero-out more than $400,000 in federal taxes Lucas Sirois owed for 2017 and 2018. Multiple witnesses testified that Lucas Sirois had lied to a local credit union when he opened accounts there in order to hide that he was in the marijuana business. Millions of dollars in marijuana proceeds flowed through those accounts during the conspiracy period,” according to prosecutors’ documents.

In addition to Lucas Sirois, others convicted in the case are his father, Robert Sirois, Randal Cousineau, Alisa Sirois, Brandon Dagnese, Kenneth Allen, former Rangeley Selectman David Burgess, former Franklin County sheriff’s Deputies Derreck Doucette and Bradley Scovil, and former prosecutor Kayla Alves, who was convicted of destroying evidence related to the investigation in 2022.