By Ruth Hill R.N.
From California to Maine, Chinese organized crime has come to dominate much of the nation’s illicit marijuana trade, an investigation by ProPublica and The Frontier has found. Along with the explosive growth of this criminal industry, the gangsters have unleashed lawlessness: violence, drug trafficking, money laundering, gambling, bribery, document fraud, bank fraud, environmental damage, and theft of water and electricity.
Chinese organized crime “has taken over marijuana in Oklahoma and the United States,” said Donie Anderson, the director of the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, in an interview.
Among the victims are thousands of Chinese immigrants, many of them smuggled across the Mexican border to toil in often abusive conditions at farms ringed by fences, surveillance cameras, and guards with guns and machetes. A grim offshoot of this indentured servitude: Traffickers force Chinese immigrant women into prostitution for the bosses of the agricultural workforce.
The Maine Wire reported in January 2025 that Xisen Guo, 68, in the U.S. District Court of Maine in Bangor, pleaded guilty to maintaining a drug-involved premises. Arrested in April 2024, Guo operated an illegal marijuana grow house at 549 Main St. in Passadumkeag, located approximately 60 miles (96.5 kilometers) north of Bangor. Judge John Woodcock accepted Guo’s guilty plea through a Cantonese interpreter after he waived his right to be indicted by a grand jury. Law enforcement officials can smell the tell-tale signs of an illegal grow.
The high electricity consumption of a home, its cardboard-covered windows, and the odor of marijuana drew law enforcement’s attention to an operation off the beaten path in rural Maine. Police zeroed in on the Passadumkeag operation partly because of the home’s utility bills reviewed by deputies. According to court documents, after Guo purchased the house for $125,000 cash, the electricity use went from about $300 a month to nearly $9,000.
Investigators said that it’s consistent with heat pumps, costly lighting, and other gear needed to grow marijuana indoors. According to documents, the homeowner, a limited liability company, upgraded the electric capability to double that of a typical Maine home.
The bust of a home with a hidden grow operation and the seizure of nearly 40 pounds (18 kilograms) of processed marijuana mark the latest example of what authorities describe as a years-long trend of foreign nationals exploiting U.S. state laws. The legalization of cannabis for recreational or medical use often leads to the production of marijuana for illicit markets in the U.S.
In Passadumkeag, Xisen Guo, a naturalized U.S. citizen born in China, has been accused of transforming the house into a high-tech, illicit grow operation, according to court documents. He was ordered held without bail on federal drug charges, making him the first person to be charged federally in such a case in Maine.
The Internal Revenue Service and Department of Homeland Security, the FBI, DEA, and local law enforcement are working together to get to the bottom of the illicit grow operations in Maine. The state legalized adult consumption of marijuana, but growers must be licensed by the state. The Maine Office of Cannabis Policy said Guo was operating an unlicensed operation, according to court documents.
The illicit grow operations across the U.S. began cropping up several years ago. In 2018, U.S. authorities arrested a Seattle woman, conducted raids, and seized thousands of marijuana plants during an investigation of an operation with Chinese ties. Oklahoma officials learned that straw owners in China and Mexico were running illegal operations after marijuana was legalized by the state for medical purposes in 2018.
The legality of marijuana consumption and cultivation in those states tends to provide cover for illegal grow operations, which may draw less attention. Marijuana is then trafficked in states where it’s illegal. The possible involvement of foreign nationals using Maine properties to profit from unlicensed marijuana operations and interstate distributions makes it clear that there is a need for a strong and sustained federal, state, and local effort to shut down these operations.
The Trump Administration’s immigration policy, along with deportation will likely have more of an effect in reducing organized crime in illegal grows.
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