Madison.com reports
An ongoing Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics investigation has linked sex trafficking, prostitution and drug trafficking to multiple medical marijuana farms in Oklahoma, the agency announced Friday.
An Asian organized crime network recruited undocumented Asian women to serve as prostitutes for the managers and administrators of several farms across the state, a spokesman said in a news release.
The organization was also linked to the trafficking of ketamine, a short-acting anesthetic with hallucinogenic effects used as a recreational street drug and sometimes used to facilitate sexual assaults, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration, the release states.
A team of Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control agents, Oklahoma County sheriff’s deputies and Oklahoma Attorney General’s Office officers served four search warrants at residences in the Oklahoma City area Thursday as part of the investigation, arresting two people on drug charges, removing two prostituted women from a brothel, and seizing cash, a gun, ketamine and several unidentified pills.
Additional arrests are possible as the investigation continues, the spokesman wrote.
The investigation is only one of several ongoing into numerous criminal organizations linked to medical marijuana farms in the state, OBN Director Donnie Anderson said.
“Over the past two years, my agency has shut down over 800 medical marijuana farms tied to organized crime in Oklahoma, seized more than 600,000 pounds of illegal marijuana and made nearly 200 arrests,” Anderson said in the release.
“Many of the farms obtained their license by fraud, grow for the black markets around the United States and launder the illicit proceeds, world-wide. They also have been linked to homicides, labor trafficking, sex trafficking, and other crimes.”
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