![]() Scott Carney By hoodwinking regulators in Colorado, a state with legal weed, and smuggling marijuana to Minnesota, where weed was illegal, the group made millions of dollars upselling its product on the black market. It did this by posing as legitimate growers, and by exploiting one of Colorado’s oldest medical marijuana programs: the caregiving initiative (in which “caregivers” grow small amounts of medical weed for individual patients). After the final episode dropped on September 22, the whole show became binge-able, with all the elements of a Hollywood caper: skydiving drug mules, dispensary thefts, a laboratory explosion, informants and, yes, tales of drug money stashed away in the Rockies.īut beyond all the window dressing and high-flying antics, the group’s biggest accomplishment wasn’t flying up to 900 pounds of pot out of state (and over the heads of regulators) on each smuggling run it was hiding in plain sight within Colorado’s regulated cannabis industry. The result is The Syndicate, an eight-episode narrative podcast series that explores an ambitious pot-smuggling operation and the underbelly of Colorado’s cannabis industry. Soon, I found myself not just looking for bags of hidden cash, but flying around the country - and even jumping out of airplanes - in pursuit of a wild tale. Once I had access to the records, though, I committed to reporting the story and chasing every lead. I wanted to know the full story behind the group’s rise and fall, but I had to wait years - until mid-2019 - before the state agreed to unseal its investigative files. State authorities in Colorado made a big deal out of prosecuting the black-market enterprise, boldly calling their takedown “ Operation Golden Go-fer” - a reference to the sports team at the University of Minnesota, where some of the group’s members had met. I first heard about the group while working as a Westword staff writer in 2015. This trip into Pike National Forest was just one part of an expansive investigation I’d initiated into a marijuana-smuggling group that operated in Colorado from 2010 to 2014. Toward the end of last year, I found myself going on all kinds of similar misadventures. ![]() Forest Service had banned recreational shooting along this road in 2014, there were still areas full of pockmarked trees - just as the recording described - as I drove along it in October 2019.īut my mission in the forest wasn’t just to locate old bullet casings. The forest around me certainly fit the description. It was like a place where people went to go shoot their guns.” “There were thousands of casings everywhere. “It was like fifty yards of trees off the side of this mountain that had all just been mowed down,” the voice said. I hit the “play” button on my phone, and a voice crackled to life over the car’s speakers. Still, I wanted to be absolutely sure I was in the right spot, so I decided to compare notes with an audio recording I’d obtained. It does not store any personal data.As I rounded a corner on Mount Herman Road, an unpaved access way cut into the forests above Monument, I began to see evidence of what I was looking for. The cookie is set by the GDPR Cookie Consent plugin and is used to store whether or not user has consented to the use of cookies. ![]() The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Performance". This cookie is set by GDPR Cookie Consent plugin. The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Other. The cookies is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Necessary". The cookie is set by GDPR cookie consent to record the user consent for the cookies in the category "Functional". The cookie is used to store the user consent for the cookies in the category "Analytics". These cookies ensure basic functionalities and security features of the website, anonymously. Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly.
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