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Hard to compete with The Cartels!
A massacre that killed 6 reveals the dangerous world of illegal pot in SoCal deserts
A San Bernardino County sheriff's deputy, left, detains a cannabis worker in the Lucerne Valley, CA.
A Sept. 2022 shows a San Bernardino County sheriff’s deputy detaining a cannabis worker on an illicit cannabis farm in the Lucerne Valley. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)
BY SUMMER LIN, SALVADOR HERNANDEZ, KAREN GARCIA
JAN. 30, 2024 10:30 PM PT
In a desolate stretch of California desert off U.S. Highway 395, Franklin Noel Bonilla made one last desperate plea to save his life.
“I’ve been shot,” he told 911 dispatchers in Spanish, according to authorities. “I don’t know where I am.”
Officials tracked the coordinates of the phone call to a dirt road in the remote desert community of El Mirage, about 50 miles northeast of Los Angeles.
There they made a horrific discovery: six men with gunshot wounds, four of them with severe burns, and two abandoned vehicles, one of which was pocked with bullet holes.
Authorities think the massacre was the result of a dispute over illegal marijuana, and it marks the latest act of shocking violence in isolated areas of California where a black market for pot has flourished.
The death toll, which has included shootings and dismemberments, has alarmed law enforcement officials and comes as illegal grow operations have spread in inland desert communities across Southern California.
Cannabis plants on an illegal grow blow in the wind
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Hundreds of pot farms have cropped up across the desert region, bringing crime and fear with them, according to residents and law enforcement officials.
A San Bernardino County Sheriff's deputy at an illegal marijuana grow in the unincorporated area of Phelan.
A June 2022 photo shows a San Bernardino County Sheriff’s deputy counting out one-pound bags of processed cannabis on an illegal marijuana grow in the unincorporated area of Phelan. (Brian van der Brug/Los Angeles Times)
In the last year alone, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department said its marijuana enforcement teams served 411 search warrants for illegal marijuana grows. They found 14 “honey oil” labs, 655,000 plants and 74,000 pounds of processed marijuana. Eleven search warrants were executed in the immediate area where the slayings took place.
“The plague is the black market of marijuana and certainly cartel activity, and a number of victims are out there,” Sheriff Shannon Dicus said.
A Times investigation last year uncovered the proliferation of illegal cannabis in California after the passage of Proposition 64, which legalized the recreational use of marijuana in the state. Although the 2016 legislation promised voters that the legal market would hobble illegal trade and its associated violence, there has been a surge in the black market.
Growers at illegal sites can avoid the expensive licensing fees and regulatory costs associated with legal farms. Violence is a looming threat at these operations, authorities said, because illicit harvests yield huge quantities of cash to operators who can’t use banks or law enforcement for protection.
An illustration depicts a scene inside a growth operation where a mysterious envelope is exchanged by two people.
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In 2020, six people were found shot to death at a property in Aguanga, a small community in rural Riverside County east of Temecula. A seventh victim later died at a nearby hospital.
The victims were immigrants from Laos and were found at a large-scale illegal marijuana cultivation and processing site — a “major organized-crime type of an operation,” Riverside County Sheriff Chad Bianco said at the time.
It is hard to determine the number of homicides tied to illegal pot farms. But a Times review in 2021 found at least five Mojave Desert killings in 2020 and 2021 that investigators said were connected to pot farming.
Black markets can thrive despite the legalization of the product, according to Peter Hanink, a professor of sociology and criminology at Cal Poly Pomona.
“It doesn’t matter what the product is,” he said. “If there’s sufficient demand and the thing is valuable enough, you’ll get a black market.”
Adelanto, CA - January 24: San Bernardino sheriff's department officials investigate scene where five were found dead in a remote area of SanBernardino county north of Adelato January 24, 2024. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
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Cartels in Mexico have traditionally carved up and delegated certain areas to different groups so they don’t have to kill each other to make money, Hanink said. At the beginning of a black market, when there’s more instability, there could be violence that results from regional groups competing over the same area. Hanink said the El Mirage slayings could’ve been between competing groups, based on the grisly nature of the crime.
“The sheer violence and the extent of the violence — burning the bodies and how extreme it was, it’s the sort of thing that suggests someone is trying to send a message,” he said.
Hanink stressed, however, that he doesn’t believe Mexican cartels were involved in the San Bernardino County killings, because the FBI, Homeland Security and the Drug Enforcement Administration haven’t gotten involved. The fact that the investigation involves only the Sheriff’s Department and the California Highway Patrol indicates it’s a local California matter, he said.
“Mexican cartels tend to stay local to Mexico, and they very rarely try to do things within the U.S. because they don’t want to involve U.S. law enforcement,” he said. “If you have executions being ordered by parties in other countries, that becomes a case of U.S. security interest.”
Bill Bodner, former special agent in charge of the DEA’s Los Angeles Field Division, agreed that while Mexican cartels have previously been involved in the illegal marijuana business, most have shifted to synthetic drugs, such as methamphetamine and fentanyl.
Illegal marijuana trade has also become unprofitable for the cartels, he said, because of the risk of getting shipments seized at the U.S.-Mexico border.
Bodner said disputes at illegal grows usually involve the theft of product or cash and, in some cases, workers seeking to get paid.
“Don’t forget, it’s a criminal business run by criminals, so they’re going to pay as little as they can,” Bodner said.
The marijuana black market has thrived in California in recent years, as growers try to circumvent taxes, feeding an unlicensed, unregulated industry and, at times, making its way into legitimate dispensaries as well,Bodner said.
In 2019, an audit by the United Cannabis Business Assn. found nearly 3,000 unlicensed dispensaries and delivery services were operating in the state — at least three times more than legal, regulated businesses.
Four years later, Bodner believes the black market has only gotten larger in California.
“The number of unlicensed grows, conservatively, has doubled,” he said.
LUCERNE VALLEY, CA - September 30, 2022: Two cannabis workers comfort each other after San Bernardino sheriff's deputies served a search warrant on an illicit farm and destroyed plants Friday, Sept. 30, 2022 in Lucerne Valley, CA. (Brian van der Brug / Los Angeles Times)
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At first, deputies saw cardboard, rubber tires, broken bottles and bullet casings littering the ground when they drove out to the remote El Mirage location on Jan. 23. There were two abandoned vehicles nearby, one of them riddled with bullet holes. Then they found the bodies.
Four of the six victims have been identified: Franklin Noel Bonilla, 22; Baldemar Mondragon-Albarran, 34; and Kevin Dariel Bonilla, 25. The fourth is a 45-year-old man, whose identity is being withheld pending notification of next of kin. They were all Latino, possibly Honduran nationals, and lived in Adelanto and Hesperia, authorities said.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff's Dept. arrested five men in a multiple slaying in San Bernardino County.
The San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Dept. arrested five men in a gruesome multiple slaying in a remote part of the Mojave Desert in San Bernardino County. (San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Dept.)
After the brutal slayings, the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department served search warrants in Apple Valley, Adelanto and the Los Angeles County area of Piñon Hills. They arrested five men in connection with the killings — Toniel Baez-Duarte, 34; Mateo Baez-Duarte, 24; Jose Nicolas Hernandez-Sarabia, 33; Jose Gregorio Hernandez-Sarabia, 34, and Jose Manuel Burgos Parra, 26.
Authorities say they believe everyone involved in the killings has been arrested and there are no outstanding suspects.
When serving warrants, detectives recovered eight firearms. They will undergo forensic examinations to determine whether any were used in the slayings, said Michael Warrick, a sergeant in the specialized investigation division of the Sheriff’s Department.
Warrick wouldn’t comment on whether the slayings were cartel-related but said there were “certain things at the scene that show a level of violence that obviously raises some interesting questions for us.”
CALIFORNIACANNABIS
Summer Lin
Summer Lin is a reporter on the Fast Break Desk, the Los Angeles Times’ breaking news team. Before coming to The Times, she covered breaking news for the Mercury News and national politics and California courts for McClatchy’s publications, including the Sacramento Bee. An East Coast native, Lin moved to California after graduating from Boston College and Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism. In her free time, she enjoys hikes, skiing and a good Brooklyn bagel.
Salvador Hernandez
Salvador Hernandez is a reporter on the Fast Break Desk, the Los Angeles Times’ breaking news team. Before joining the newsroom in 2022, he was a senior reporter for BuzzFeed News, where he covered criminal justice issues, the growing militia movement and breaking news. He also covered crime as a reporter at the Orange County Register. He is a Los Angeles native.
Karen Garcia is a reporter on the Fast Break Desk, the team that has a pulse on breaking news at the Los Angeles Times. She was previously a reporter on the Utility Journalism Team, which focused on service journalism. Her previous stints include reporting for the San Luis Obispo New Times and KCBX Central Coast Public Radio.
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