After a two-year investigation, federal officials charged 10 people with involvement in a large-scale marijuana growing operation on state and federal public lands in Southern California.
The latest of eight raids took place in October on a marijuana field in the Cleveland National Forest on the border between San Diego and Riverside counties. Agents found more than a thousand pounds of processed marijuana.
The ten people charged are believed to be mid- to high-level managers in a drug trafficking organization with ties to Mexico. Officials said the organization smuggled in undocumented workers to tend the marijuana crops. And toxic pesticides were used and disposed of at the grow sites, threatening the environment, they said.
San Diego County Sheriff Bill Gore called it one of the most extensive marijuana growing investigations in the United States.
