Ventura County – Ventura County Sheriff’s Department investigators, working on the Ventura County Interagency Pharmaceutical Crimes Unit task force in concert with teams from the California Highway Patrol, and the Ventura County District Attorney’s Office Bureau of Investigation have arrested a major supplier of concentrated cannabis at his Los Angeles area facility.
On June 4th, Ventura County investigators served a search warrant at the residence of Jan Shmidt, 31, pursuant to information indicating that he had been supplying Ventura County buyers with the concentrated cannabis known on the street as “honey oil” or “wax”.
According to Ventura County Sheriff’s Department Public Information Officer Sgt. Victor Fazio, when investigators entered Shmidt’s Encino, Ca. residence, the discovered “an active large scale butane honey oil lab”, which Fazio described as a potentially lethal environment. When deputies walked into the home, Shmidt was actively processing the illegal products, “converting marijuana material into a concentrated form of the plant through the use of butane” with the use of three industrial open-flame ovens that were “creating an extremely hazardous and volatile situation for the neighborhood.”
Police display what they confiscated
Shmidt was summarily escorted out of the residence while deputies summoned help from the Los Angeles City Fire Department and a handful of other emergency and hazardous materials teams to render the scene safe from any possible chemical or fire disaster.
A subsequent search of the premises revealed several hundred pounds of marijuana, “approximately two pounds of honey oil/wax, hundreds of cans of butane, over $60,000 in cash, and a sophisticated surveillance system”, as detailed by Fazio’s report to the media.
Shmidt—who apparently was so busy pumping out his product for street sales to monitor his own surveillance system—was booked into Ventura County Jail on multiple drug possession, manufacturing, and sales charges, with his bail set at $250,000.
Photo: Courtesy Ventura County Jail Booking
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