Credit: Photo courtesy of Ohio State Highway Patrol

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  • Photo courtesy of Ohio State Highway Patrol

Last week we penned a story about a $1.5 million drug bust in Geauga County – a raid that will go down as one of the biggest in county history – but all that’s small potatoes compared to this latest bout of Ohio drug confiscation news:

On Saturday, police seized a whopping 2,330 pounds of marijuana after pulling over a U-Haul with Arizona plates for a traffic infraction on I-70 in Preble County, OH.

Police say the driver and his passenger claimed to be moving furniture from California to the East Coast, yet neither man had a valid driver’s license and the furniture they were supposedly moving was mostly junk.

Drug sniffing dogs quickly discovered the duo was hauling far more valuable goods – 84 individually wrapped bundles of marijuana, valued at $11.6 million, and destined for distribution in Ohio.

The driver, Mario Arnold Mendoza of Texas, and passenger, Hector Andres Olea-Castro of Tijuana, MX, are currently being held in the Preble County Jail and have been charged with possession of marijuana.

If convicted with the second-degree felony, each man could be slapped with eight years in prison and up to $7,500 in fines.

This article appears in Jun 11-17, 2014.

Alaina Nutile is the Web Editor who oversees all digital content and social media initiatives for Cleveland Scene Magazine and Detroit Metro Times. Before joining the staff in June 2013, she interned at Business Insider in New York City, and at La Hora in Quito, Ecuador. Alaina is a graduate of Kalamazoo College in Michigan, where she double majored in English and Spanish. Her interests include Japanese food, Breaking Bad, and career development advising.

12 replies on “Ohio Police Seize $11.6 Million Worth of Marijuana”

  3. DEO…..use some logic my friend – this amount of marijuana being transported by 2 Mexicans has NOTHING to do with medicinal marijuana. This cartel dope and the amount of the death and mayhem that’s related to it’s distribution is not good for the legalization cause.

  4. Dang, that’s a lot of drugs. The sad part is, if they were at all smart, they wouldn’t put all their eggs in one basket and load all of their drugs in one U-Haul. So this was probably just a part of their overall shipment to the area.

  7. Police in Ohio are nothing but cowards. Where is a Meth Lab Bust? Or a Heroin Den? Oh wait you may get killed serving that warrant. Keep harassing Potheads.

  8. Even back in the mid-Seventies, when I lived in Florida…seizing a ton of weed was NOTHING.

    Of course, there’s a catch. There always is. Weed costs about 25 times more than it did then…a ton was about a half-million bucks worth of pot back in the day, not 11.6 million.

    Weed has gone mainstream, so the prices are ridiculous…I hear a joint in one of those yuppie dope marts out in Denver sells for sixteen bucks. It had better be a lot more potent than hippie ditch weed from Kentucky.

    Chuckles the Clown

  9. the greatest plant in the universe is almost free, LET FREEDOM RING! 13

    ENLIGHTENMENT…i was an evil brainwashed, mean, christian conservative until i tried it at 17 years old…i hated gays, immigrants, women’s rights, blacks, marijuana, i was Rush Limbaugh’s #1 fan….until i smoked marijuana….changed the world

    1000s of my friends and family have grown 30-99 plants for 20 years, thanks for keeping prices high and NORCAL wealthy…#1 crop in cali = $15 Billion Untaxed…

    “any doctor against marijuana is a doctor of death” – cali secret 420

    from 0 states to half the country(now the majority), from low 20% approval to almost 70%, cali runs this planet by 2 decades, time to tie marijuana to the 2014, 2016 elections, out with the old, in with the new

    20 years behind us southern states and NEW YORK, sad and scary….nobody denies freedoms like the south, nobody…the top ten incarcerators on the planet are southern states and more blacks are in prison then were slaves before the civil war…even if marijuana reforms did pass the republiCANTS in charge would deny you all your freedoms, centuries of practice…no matter though, we never planned on getting your backwards brethren from day one, half the country already but not one southern state, lol…not 1….the new generations are taking over in the south and they are nothing like their freedom denying parents, let’s ride…

    Deaths by Alcohol: Millions
    Deaths by Tobacco: Millions
    Deaths by Prescription Drugs: Quadrupled in last decade
    Deaths by Guns: Millions
    Deaths by the food we are fed: Millions
    Deaths by Marijuana: 0, ever…they are killing my American family while denying freedom

    love and freedom forever

    AMERICA’S WAR ON DRUGS IS A WAR ON AMERICANS! 33

  10. California, Washington and Colorado thank you for keeping prices high and the $$$ rolling WEST…refilling that order in minutes

  11. seems obvious to me this is that “mexican brick weed” sells for less than a thousand bucks a pound… So 11.6 million? they wish.
    Leave the Mexicans alone they are just trying to make a living, if they keep getting busted like this they will just resort to smuggling heroin over here and growing poppy instead of Cannabis.

  12. A TON of marijuana? From Arizona? Wouldn’t this have been several acres’ worth of crop?

    In any event, I agree that marijuana should be legal and I agree that until it is, we are feeding the cartels.

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