OKLAHOMA CITY – An eight-count federal indictment was unsealed recently charging three people, including a metro attorney previously indicted by a multicounty state grand jury and a metro real-estate broker, with facilitating the black-market marijuana industry and establishing several illegal marijuana farms.
Matthew Alan Stacy, 44, is named in 42 federal and state felony charges accusing him of involvement in illicit marijuana grow operations at Cement, Rush Springs, Blanchard, Morrison, Maramec, Mulhall, Guthrie, Stratford, Depew, Okmulgee, and Moore.
Stacy, of Blanchard, along with Chong Iu Phu, 47, and his brother, Chanh Iu Phu, 41, both of Edmond, are named in an eight-count federal indictment accusing them of drug conspiracy.
Stacy also is charged with one count of maintaining a drug-involved premises, Chong Iu Phu with four counts of maintaining a drug-involved premises, and Chanh with possession of marijuana with intent to distribute.
Chong Iu Phu is identified in the indictment as the owner of several Oklahoma businesses, including Gold Tree Realtors and GTR Management Group, a property management company. Chong also owned and operated Poly Real Estate, Infinity Investment Properties, Eagle Summit Properties, Golden Fortune Consulting, and Evergrand Properties.
As “one of the few Mandarin-speaking real estate agents in Oklahoma,” Chong “was uniquely situated to provide realty services to Mandarin-speaking foreign nationals and non-Oklahoma residents seeking to purchase property for their marijuana farms and to establish marijuana- related businesses,” investigators wrote.
Stacy ran for the state Senate in District 26 in 2016 but lost in the Republican primary to Lonnie Paxton.
The 27-page indictment alleges that Chong Iu Phu, a real estate broker, and Stacy, who owns a law firm in Yukon, conspired to aid and abet marijuana traffickers in Oklahoma by making false and fraudulent representations on applications for state licenses to operate marijuana farms – all on behalf of their black-market marijuana trafficker clients.
Although Oklahoma voters approved State Question 788 in 2018 that legalized medical marijuana, medical marijuana remains a Schedule 1 controlled substance under federal law.
Oklahoma law requires an owner/ operator of a medical marijuana grow to obtain a license through the Oklahoma Medical Marijuana Authority and register with the Oklahoma State Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs Control. Oklahoma law also mandates that at least 75% of any commercial marijuana grow operation must be owned by an Oklahoma resident.
In the years after passage of medical marijuana in Oklahoma, the OMMA approved more than 9,000 commercial grow licenses. “Many of these commercial grows were established fraudulently, with their owners making false representations on applications for OMMA licenses and OBN registrations,” state and federal investigators noted.
Because of a crackdown on illicit marijuana activities in this state, the number of marijuana grow operations has fallen by more than half: to 3,943 as of April 12, OMMA records reflect.
The federal indictment alleges that Phu and Stacy helped their clients evade residency requirements and establish black-market marijuana farms.
From about August 2019 through March 2023, the indictments charge, Chong and Stacy “worked together to help marijuana traffickers, who did not qualify to own and operate marijuana farms” in Oklahoma, “evade licensing requirements and obtain” the requisite licenses and registrations.
For example, Chong and Stacy brokered the purchase of land that enabled an unindicted co-conspirator to establish illegal marijuana farms in Maramec and Mulhall, where marijuana was produced and sold “on the black market...”
Chong also brokered the sale of land in Cement where two other unindicted co-conspirators – neither of whom was an Oklahoma resident – could establish a marijuana farm.
Stacy is accused of having rented those two individuals land that he owned in Blanchard on which they operated an unlicensed marijuana farm while the infrastructure for the illegal operation in Cement was being built. From the Blanchard farm, off state Highway 76, the two unindicted co-conspirators “regularly distributed marijuana outside of Oklahoma on the black market,” the indictment alleges.
Defendant’s parents were ‘straw owners’ Court documents allege specific instances where Phu and Stacy either purchased, or facilitated the purchase of, Oklahoma residents’ personal identifying information – which Phu and Stacy then used on applications for OMMA licenses and OBN registrations that they submitted on behalf of persons who did not qualify to serve as majority owners and operators of commercial marijuana grows.
The indictment specifically alleges that ‘straw owners’ listed by Phu included an employee of one of his realty companies, as well as Phu’s parents.
That employee was falsely listed as the owner of marijuana grow operations in Morrison and Guthrie, investigators found. And during a two-year period, from Sept. 30, 2020, through Sept. 16, 2022, Chong Iu Phu listed his mother on more than 15 applications and listed his father on “several” applications, investigators learned.
“Ghost-ownership schemes” such as this one “resulted in numerous individuals, including illegal aliens and foreign nationals, as well as U.S. citizens of states other than Oklahoma, illegally receiving OMMA licenses and OBN registrations and operating marijuana grows,” the indictment relates.
The indictment further alleges that Phu, along with his brother Chanh, “served as a onestop-shop for marijuana traffickers from other states seeking to set up marijuana grows” in Oklahoma, “many of which operated on the black market.”
In addition to carrying out the alleged ghost-licensing scheme, Phu is charged with using his brokerage firm and network of property-management and property-investment companies to service the housing and/ or real estate needs of black-market marijuana traffickers by brokering land sales for them across Oklahoma, renting them land on which to operate their black-market marijuana grows, and renting them residences which served as marijuana stash houses and personal residences of the owners of black-market grows.
The Indictment also alleges that Phu and Chanh themselves were directly involved in the operation of black-market grows, and that Stacy rented land to individuals he knew were not licensed to grow and allowed the black-market operation to operate on his land.
If found guilty, all three defendants face up to life in federal prison.
State/federal probe spanned 2+ years This prosecution is part of an Organized Crime Drug Enforcement Task Force investigation. OCDETF identifies, disrupts, and dismantles the highest- level drug traffickers, money launderers, gangs and transnational criminal organizations that threaten the United States by using a prosecutor-led, intelligence-driven, multi-agency approach that leverages the strengths of federal, state, and local law enforcement agencies against criminal networks.
The charges are the result of more than two years of statewide investigations led by the Drug Enforcement Administration – Oklahoma City District Office, the FBI Oklahoma City Field Office, the Internal Revenue Service – Criminal Investigations, with the assistance of Homeland Security Investigations and the OBN.
Commenting on the increasing pressure that state and federal law enforcement agencies are applying against “bad actors,” Oklahoma Attorney General Gentner Drummond recently stated, “We are sending a clear message to Mexican drug cartels, Chinese crime syndicates, and all others who are endangering public safety through these heinous operations. And that message is to get the hell out of Oklahoma.”
34 state charges still pending Stacy is named in 34 felony charges pending in Garvin County District Court.
Those include 26 counts of offering a false or forged instrument for record, five counts of manufacturing a controlled dangerous substance (marijuana), trafficking of a controlled dangerous substance (marijuana), conspiracy to defraud the state, and engaging in a pattern of criminal offenses.
His formal arraignment on those charges is scheduled for June 10. Stacy is represented in that case by Boston attorney Robert Goldstein.
Stacy was indicted by a multicounty grand jury on Oct. 17, 2022, and the charges were filed in Garvin County the same day. The felony counts accuse him of manufacturing marijuana in Rush Springs, Moore, Okmulgee, Depew and Stratford.
Federal trial in May for Chinese owner of Maramec, Mulhall farms Federal charges of money laundering conspiracy were filed against five Chinese nationals associated with marijuana farms in Maramec and Mulhall.
Four of the five individuals pleaded guilty to a federal charge of money laundering conspiracy.
Two of the four were sentenced, but one of them fled the jurisdiction and has remained at-large for several months. Yan Bing Wu was sentenced to 12 months and a day in federal prison. Tongfei Wu was sentenced to 20 months in prison, but the day before he was to report to prison he removed his electronic monitoring device and still remains at-large, court records indicate.
Yuan Yuan Lo, 31, and her husband, Liang Wu, 38, have not been sentenced yet, federal court records indicate. However, the court ordered the forfeiture of a house in Country Club Terrace in Edmond and ordered Lo and Wu to forfeit $239,450 in cash that investigators identified as “proceeds obtained as a result” of criminal activity.
The alleged owner/ operator of the marijuana farms, Jiu Bing Lin, alias Jack Lin, 46, is scheduled for trial in Oklahoma City’s Western District federal court on the May 14 docket.
Lin and his wife paid $690,000 for the marijuana farm at Maramec, in Pawnee County, records show.
Lin was indicted on 10 felony charges of drug conspiracy, money laundering conspiracy, four counts of laundering monetary instruments, and four counts of monetary transaction in criminally derived property. In the latter he is accused of depositing in a bank account multiple checks, each written in an amount in excess of $10,000 that was derived from illegal activity: buying, selling, and dealing in a controlled substance, marijuana.
A special agent with the DEA submitted an affidavit in support of a criminal complaint accusing Lin of conspiring to manufacture and distribute 1,000 kilograms (2,204 pounds) or more of “a mixture or substance containing a detectable amount of marijuana.”