Fake agents raid an Oklahoma marijuana farm, cops say. But the grower wasn’t fooled

A crew of armed robbers dressed as law enforcement is targeting marijuana growing operations in Oklahoma, and have reportedly staged fake raids on at least three farms in recent days, officials say.

While they successfully robbed two legal operations, one grower was not fooled by their costumes.

Oklahoma City attorney Donald Gies was at his desk when the grower called him, Gies told McClatchy News in an interview. It was around 2 p.m. Monday, March 14.

He was on the phone with another client at the time, so he initially let it go. But the text message that followed was urgent: “I’m being raided, please help.”

“I was very confused,” Gies said.

He’s helped clients with raids before — he represents hundreds of individuals involved in Oklahoma’s booming marijuana industry — but this one was immediately odd.

“She and I have painstakingly gone through the license process,” Gies said, so everything should have been in perfect order.

“I didn’t know what was happening … so we were just trying to troubleshoot the situation.”

Several men with guns and badges and body armor — at least one wearing an Oklahoma Highway Patrol jacket — showed up at the grower’s operation, claiming to be law enforcement.

They showed her a warrant — filled with misspellings — which turned out to be as fake as the rest of their credentials, they later discovered. The weapons, however, were not pretend.

Wisely, his client left speakerphone on, Gies said. He could hear everything happening.

“She was scared because they were in normal clothes and they had Halloween masks and things like that, and what she’s doing is describing that out loud to me,” he said.

“She was awesome, thinking on her feet,” Gies said.

Suspicious but uncertain, Gies suggested a straightforward approach.

“I instructed her to ask what agency they were affiliated with … they stated they were with the Oklahoma Marijuana Board,” he said. “So that kind of threw some red flags up.”

The Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority has overseen the industry since it was legalized for medicinal purposes by voters in 2018 — but there is no such thing as the Oklahoma Marijuana Board.

The grower then retrieved her licenses and showed them to the agents, Gies said.

Seeing that she wasn’t backing down, and that she had an attorney on the phone, the men said they must have come to the wrong farm by accident, and left empty-handed. But they successfully robbed a different marijuana farm nearby, Gies said, the third in their string of raids.

“By the time they were done with the third farm that they hit, we had already called the authorities.”

That tip helped lead police to an arrest, Gies said.

In another raid, the suspects held five people at gunpoint and forced them into a locked shed, investigators told KFOR.

State authorities and local police are working together to find the remaining suspects, who kicked off their run of robberies on Friday, March 11 in Hughes County, before striking again in neighboring Seminole County, outlets reported.

It’s not clear how many suspects are involved. Based on pictures his client took, there appear to be at least three, maybe four, Gies said.

Gies’ client grows in Seminole County, which is roughly 40 miles east of Oklahoma City.

This story was originally published March 16, 2022 at 5:51 PM with the headline "Fake agents raid an Oklahoma marijuana farm, cops say. But the grower wasn’t fooled."