ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Monday, August 5, 1996 TAG: 9608050007
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SERIES: SECOND OF TWO PARTS
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
NOTE: Below
The 750 marijuana plants confiscated from Majid Khoshghad's house still sit in a 55-gallon drum in the evidence room at the Roanoke County Police Department.
Fans had to be installed to help dissipate the smell of the pot, even though it's sealed in plastic bags. Even now, 18 months after police chopped down the plants in Khoshghad's basement, a pungent odor fills the evidence room and the hallway outside when the metal drum is opened.
"It gives you a damn headache," said Roanoke County Detective Huck Ewers.
The Phototron pot's distinctive quality helped police track down its source and gave them an incentive to find its growers, who, police said, were running the largest indoor growing operation ever broken up in Western Virginia. ``Phototron'' is the name of a plant-growing machine; Phototron pot is distinctive for its 12-to 16-inch buds, much larger than typical marijuana buds.
Today, three of the growers report to prison. Another, Victor Layman - who headed the conspiracy - received an extension till the end of the month. Several will serve their time together at a federal prison camp in Beckley, W.Va. Dayna Layman, Victor Layman's wife, was sentenced to house arrest, but the government is appealing.
At the time of the arrests, the operation was running at a peak level.
"At that point, they were fiddling with strains," perfecting the plant quality, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Joe Mott, who prosecuted the 10 defendants in the case.
Although the defendants who pleaded guilty to conspiracy claimed they had left the business or were about to do so at the time of their arrests, Mott doesn't believe it. They would have continued to add grow houses if the right opportunity had come along, he says.
"I think they were prepared to meet demands in the market," said Roanoke Vice Lt. Ron Carlisle.
Police never discovered another active grow house after raiding Khoshghad's, although they found at least five that had been dismantled before they got there. They relied heavily on a paper trail to piece together the conspiracy.
"We'd go weeks and weeks between discovering a grow house," said Ewers, a county vice officer who was assigned to the federal Drug Enforcement Administration during the case. "Then I'd come in here [to Mott's office] and say, 'You won't believe it. I found another one.'''
Mott, head drug prosecutor in the U.S. attorney's office in Roanoke, says the aliases used to buy and rent houses, the clandestine distribution network and the number of people involved made this a complex case to crack. In the end, there were grow houses police never found that the defendants told them about after they pleaded guilty.
"It was probably the most complicated, time-consuming case I've ever done," Mott said.
Americans are ambivalent about marijuana. More than 70 million have smoked it, according to the lobbying group Marijuana Policy Project, but the majority of adults oppose legalization.
Ewers thinks marijuana should remain criminalized, but says society needs to make up its mind about it.
"I don't believe society needs another vice. At the same time, I really believe government needs to enforce marijuana laws with vigor, or legalize it," he said, "because it's wasting law enforcement resources, and it's costly to taxpayers, and the end result is minimal."
The so-called Phototron operation involved at least 13 grow houses, at least eight growers, one main distributor and a slew of smaller dealers who were charged in state court or escaped charges by cooperating with prosecutors. Police are convinced there are more grow houses out there, still operating.
Police worked their way up the chain from small-time dealers, but figure there were other avenues of distribution they didn't find.
Said Roanoke Detective Curtis Davis, who got the tip that opened the case four years ago, "It just so happens we found an artery."
The growers were stunned to learn they faced up to life in prison for the nonviolent crime of growing marijuana.
The growers don't equate pot with harder drugs. Joseph ``Jay'' Smith III says he figured if he ever got caught, he would face probation or a few months in jail.
"Both were shocked by what's happened to the laws in the last 10 years," lawyer Jonathan Rogers said of Smith and Layman.
But Ewers sees the Phototron case as setting a precedent for future federal pot prosecutions in the Western District of Virginia. Fifty-seven months in prison is reasonable for what Smith and Layman did, he says.
He compares the sentences of the Phototron group - middle-class people engaged in an elaborate conspiracy - with the stiff sentences handed out to poor teen-agers who get caught selling crack on street corners. Dealers prosecuted in federal court with more than 5 grams of crack get mandatory five-year sentences.
"Five grams of crack on one hand versus 12, 13 grow houses on the other. How do we weight that?" Ewers asked.
There was no trial in the Phototron case because everyone pleaded guilty. But both sides fought for months over how much marijuana the conspirators should be held responsible for, since little was found by police. The defense argued that fungus, spider mites and other ills had killed off crops cycle after cycle and the growers weren't nearly as successful as the government claimed.
"It's in [the prosecution's] interest to inflate it - 'Look how good we've done our job.' They like the press," Rogers said.
In the end, U.S. District Judge James Turk meted out sentences ranging from probation to 57 months, with Smith and Layman getting the most time.
Smith is appealing his sentence.
"I'm not trying to sound like the innocent victim of this, because I'm not," he said. "I don't want to be the crybaby. But you expect a reasonable sentence for what you do."
Rogers railed against federal marijuana-sentencing guidelines at Smith's hearing.
"They were growing things so much less harmful than things the government supports," Rogers said, referring to alcohol and tobacco.
Smith is critical of government claims that marijuana is a dangerous drug.
"One unfortunate effect, particularly in college kids forming their opinion on the role of the police - they see through the hypocrisy so clearly," he said. "They know the laws are wrong, and it gives them a jaded view. ... They know it's just not that harmful. It discredits the whole concept of the law, in my opinion. Unfortunately, no one believes [police] when they talk about crack and other drugs."
Cheryl Fender, one of the growers, agrees, but she comes at it from the opposite viewpoint.
When you smoke pot, "you in your mind bring the seriousness of breaking the law down to, 'Well, it's OK. Why is it even illegal? Everyone does it.'''
Since he rented his houses, the only things the government could seize from Smith were his computer and high-wattage lights used to grow the marijuana.
Layman, on the other hand, had to forfeit three houses in which he grew pot. In addition, he and his wife forfeited $54,000 in local bank accounts and $90,000 in gold Krugerrands from an offshore account in the Bahamas. They also gave up their interest in $100,000 they lost in a Texas land scam; the government is trying to recover that money.
The proceeds from the forfeitures will be split among the police agencies that participated in the investigation.
"There's mega money in marijuana sales," said Al Henley, who was the head of the DEA's Roanoke office during the investigation.
And the Phototron operation was one of the most extensive the DEA has seen, he said. Federal agents have hit bigger operations, where the plants were all in one barn, "but the way they spread it out puts it up there with some significant operations," Henley said.
Police believe Smith, who they say was growing marijuana as much as Layman, has his assets well hidden. Mott told the judge a lie-detector test Smith took indicates that he was deceptive about his assets.
Smith insists there's nothing else. He says he was making $30,000 to $40,000 a year growing pot. What he had saved to use for commodities trading went to his attorney, he says.
"They have not found anything because there's nothing to find," he said. "But in [Joe Mott's] mind, they haven't found anything because I'm so clever."
His wife, Diana, says she wishes there were secret assets, because she will have to raise three young children by herself for the next five years, including a daughter born 21/2 weeks ago. The family probably will have to move in with relatives, she says.
Diana Smith says she's not angry at her husband.
"He tried to make the best financial decision for the family. It wasn't the best decision, but he didn't know that at the time. We all have enough to deal with without anger being involved."
While Vic and Dayna Layman both were indicted, Vic Layman took all the blame, testifying that his wife had nothing to do with the operation. When he sat down with investigators after pleading guilty to detail his involvement, he refused to answer questions about Dayna.
She testified at her sentencing that she was busy starting up a business in perennial flowers, and she had hoped Vic would abandon his pot business and join her.
Investigators challenge that assertion.
"There are cases with passive spouses," Mott said, "but this just isn't one of them."
In an ironic twist, Dayna Layman successfully argued for house arrest rather than prison, because, she said, with no one to look after them, her plants would die.
The government is appealing her house arrest.
George and Cheryl Fender, who had left the operation before the investigation began and were the first to plead guilty, received probation. But the experience has left them bitter.
Cheryl Fender says Vic Layman, a consummate salesman, was able to win over the prosecution.
"What I think happened is, Vic's charismatic character and charm got to these people," Fender said. In prison, "he'll probably be running the camp. He'll be Mr. Volleyball."
The Fenders became Jehovah's Witnesses after leaving the conspiracy and cooperated with police as soon as two investigators showed up on their doorstep in Maine.
"We're trying to save ourselves in the eyes of someone else, and the only way to do that is to throw our necks on the chopping block," Fender said before he pleaded guilty.
The couple's unsuccessful foray into illicit gardening ruined their credit and "took any shred of dignity we had in that year," Cheryl Fender said.
"It was a very stupid thing made under terms of friendship, prosperity," she said. "There was nothing rewarding about it. The friendship was lost; no money came out of it. The lying ain't worth it."
LENGTH: Long : 193 lines ILLUSTRATION: PHOTO: (headshot) Layman. color. Graphic by staff: The players.by CNB