SKOWHEGAN — A New York man and woman arrested during a crackdown on suspected illegal cannabis grow houses in Somerset County will avoid prison time if they comply with the terms of plea deals entered Wednesday.

The agreements were reached in the cases against Shubing Gao and Yihui Chen, two of the more than a dozen in the county that have been lingering on the court’s docket since enforcement efforts began in early 2024.

Gao, 48, and Chen, 53, both of Brooklyn, New York, each pleaded guilty to one felony-level charge related to improper handling of hazardous waste. 

The Class C offense indicates each “did handle hazardous waste at any location knowing or consciously disregarding a risk that such location does not have a proper license or permit as may be required for such treatment, storage or disposal.”

Gao also agreed to forfeit $1,850 and Chen agreed to forfeit $130 and a 2015 Toyota Sienna van, all of which Somerset County Sheriff’s Office investigators seized during the December 2024 search of 325 West Ridge Road in Cornville. 

In exchange, prosecutors dismissed Class B marijuana cultivation and drug trafficking charges that Gao and Chen were facing.

Per the agreement, each was ordered to comply with the terms of a 12-month deferred disposition. Each must make a $10,000 donation to a Somerset County nonprofit approved by prosecutors; pay a $35 monthly supervision fee; refrain from growing marijuana, obtaining a marijuana cultivation license and using and possessing the drug; and stay out of Maine.

If they comply with those terms, no further action will be taken. If they violate any of them, a judge will have full discretion to decide a sentence.

First Assistant District Attorney Tim Snyder said Gao and Chen made the payments earlier Wednesday to the district attorney’s office. He told a reporter after the two hearings, held at the Somerset County Superior Court, that his office had not yet finalized the organization that will receive the funds but was expecting to do so soon.

In response to questions from Superior Court Chief Justice Robert E. Mullen, Gao’s attorney, Angela Jensen, and Chen’s attorney, Wendell Skidgel, each said the guilty plea to the hazardous waste charge means their clients would not face automatic deportation. 

Both attorneys indicated the conviction might result in the initiation of removal proceedings but said federal immigration authorities would not consider that offense a “crime of moral turpitude,” a classification that would be more almost certain to result in deportation.

District Attorney Maeghan Maloney, the top elected prosecutor for Kennebec and Somerset counties who recently has been handling the similar cannabis grow house cases herself but was not at Wednesday’s hearings, credited Skidgel last month for suggesting prosecutors consider the hazardous waste offense. The offense is listed outside the state’s main criminal code in a section of law dealing with environmental regulations for waterways.

She said, however, it wouldn’t necessarily apply to all of the similar cases, and some other defendants are U.S. citizens, so immigration consequences are not in question.

Had the cases gone to trial, prosecutors would have called a staff member from the Maine Office of Cannabis Policy to testify that various items found during the December 2024 search of the Cornville residence would be considered hazardous waste, Snyder said.

The OCP staffer also would have testified that the growing operation was not licensed, and licenses are important to monitor whether hazardous waste is being handled properly, Snyder said.

Somerset County Sheriff’s Office detectives found 1,100 marijuana plants growing in four rooms, 300 plants in a drying and processing area and two tubs of processed marijuana, Snyder said. They also found Gao wearing gloves covered in marijuana residue and Chen wearing boot covers with the same material on them.

The sheriff’s office executed two dozen search warrants and made more than a dozen arrests amid the wave of enforcement targeting the illegal growing operations — which federal prosecutors at one point said totaled 200 and suggested could be connected to organized, transnational crime organizations with ties to China.

Most busts were in the first half of 2024, although some, like the arrests of Gao and Chen, came later in 2024 and into 2025.

Most of the 16 Somerset County criminal cases have been sitting on the court’s docket for various reasons, including the logistical challenge of finding Cantonese-English interpreters to assist the defendants. The courts had to call in interpreters from out of state to conduct a series of hearings in April, officials said. The interpreter at Wednesday’s proceedings appeared via videoconference.

Until recently, a plea agreement was reached in only one Somerset County case, with a misdemeanor charge against Xi Qiang Zhao, 58, of Skowhegan and Brooklyn, New York, dismissed in a deferred disposition.

One other case in the county was dismissed as federal prosecutors filed related charges in U.S. District Court, records show. That defendant, Jiamin Liao, 30, of New York, pleaded guilty in January and awaits sentencing.

In April, Dongming Liao, 43, of Monterey Park, California, pleaded guilty Wednesday to marijuana cultivation, a Class B felony, in exchange for a cap on the sentence prosecutors requested at six months in jail, three years of probation and a $10,000 fine. Mullen decided against imposing prison time or probation and settled on the $10,000 fine, while giving Liao a stern warning to stay out of the state.

Liao also agreed to forfeit $1,882 in cash seized during the April 2024 search of a residence on Cooley Road in Harmony that led to his arrest, while prosecutors agreed to dismiss the forfeiture of a 2017 Ford Transit van and return it to Liao.

Two other cases have been scheduled for change-of-plea and sentencing hearings May 27.

Mullen, meanwhile, is weighing requests from defense attorneys to toss evidence in three other cases, with rulings expected in the coming months. The legal questions attorneys have raised focused largely on the accuracy of the interpreters investigators called to assist and whether police properly notified those arrested of their constitutional rights.