The dirty black market marijuana operations in Oklahoma

OKLAHOMA CITY, Okla. (KFOR) – The Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics is addressing violence at marijuana operations in the state and sharing their broader efforts to fight foreign nationals doing dirty business in Oklahoma. This comes after a gunman executed four people at a marijuana grow farm in Northwest Kingfisher County Sunday evening.

OBN spokesman Mark Woodward tells KFOR that out of about 8,500 legally licensed marijuana farms, they're investigating about 2,000 of them for fraudulent activity.

"We've had numerous homicides that have taken place at medical marijuana businesses over the last four years since the legalization," he said. "So, this is not the first."

The investigation in Lacey, Kingfisher County, just west of Hennessey is still underway after four people were found dead and another hurt following a violent attack at a marijuana grow farm.
The OSBI said at approximately 5:45 p.m. Nov. 20, a male suspect entered a building on the property near EW 600 and NS 2760.

He was inside that building for "a significant amount of time" before executing several employees inside.

Three men and one woman – all Chinese Nationals – were shot execution-style. Another person, also Chinese, was shot multiple times and flown to OU Health.

The suspect, also a Chinese national, is now in custody.

"So, there's literally billions of dollars in uncaptured money that is going back to these criminal organizations being funneled and laundered through a lot of different means from the farms here in Oklahoma to criminal organizations from Mexico to Russia to China that are all tied to various criminal organizations that have come and gotten a license in Oklahoma, but done so under fraudulent pretenses."

He and his team are determined to make sure criminals don't consider Oklahoma a safe haven.

“They're moving their base of operations here because we've got very affordable land, we've got a very loose regulations and we've got so many of these businesses, that they believe they can hide behind that license and then continue to provide marijuana to the black market," he said. "We've talked to law enforcement all over the country who say that Oklahoma is their number one supplier of black-market marijuana."

Woodward said OBN will be aggressive at the state capitol next year, proposing strong legislation to tackle illegal activity surrounding marijuana farms.