Police link Rash of New England to cannabis facility break-ins

According to a report in the Portland Press Herald, police have linked a series of burglaries targeting New England cannabis dispensaries to a trio of suspects in Massachusetts. Police officials say a New Bedford, Massachusetts man and two Boston brothers are suspects in a string of break-ins into licensed cannabis businesses dating back to 2020.

Police began connecting the crimes in October last year after a burglary at a cannabis farm in Gorham, Maine. In that caper, three people wearing face coverings, hats and long sleeves cut through an outside wall of the business in an industrial area while a fourth person stood guard outside. Inside the building, the three burglars moved cautiously from room to room, trying to avoid being detected by motion sensors. When the team finally left a few hours later, they took 30 pounds of cannabis and 500 THC vape cartridges with them.

During their investigation, police reviewed video footage from the cannabis grower’s surveillance cameras. A camera captured the image of the Massachusetts license plate of a pickup truck that had pulled into the parking lot two hours before the crime. And inside the building, one of the camera microphones picked up the burglars’ conversations.

“Where the (expletive) is Dario?” said one burglar clearly to another.

“He’s putting the suitcases in the truck,” the accomplice replied.

Investigations identify three suspects

The license plate led law enforcement officers to Dario Almeida, a 21-year-old man with an address in New Bedford, Massachusetts. When Detective Stephen Hinkley of the Gorham Police Department called the New Bedford Police Department, they gave him a cell phone number for Almeida, who had recent contact with the department.

A week later, New Bedford police contacted Hinkley via email to inform him that Almeida and his brother Rafael were suspects in a similar break-in at a cannabis grower in Warwick, Rhode Island, where the same pickup truck was also caught on video . According to Mass Live, police believe the brothers are from South Boston and a third suspect is from New Bedford.

After contacting other law enforcement agencies in New England, Hinkley learned of seven similar burglaries that had taken place in Maine since last June. Another cannabis store in Gorham was also ambushed by criminals who sliced ​​through an outside wall on Thanksgiving night in 2020. Burglars also targeted a cannabis store in South Portland, Maine. In January, a Portland, Maine, judge issued a search warrant for evidence, including location data from one of the suspect’s cellphones, for the time two of the burglaries took place. No arrests have been made and the case is still under investigation.

Police in South Portland and Warwick did not respond to reporters’ questions about the burglaries. Gorham Police Chief Christopher Sanborn also declined to comment on the rash of burglaries.

“This is an open-ended investigation that we are currently working on,” Sanborn said. “I’m sorry but I can’t comment further at this time.”

Maine’s cannabis regulator, the Office of Marijuana Policy, requires licensed cannabis businesses to report burglaries, robberies, and other crimes. But David Heidrich, a spokesman for the agency, said many companies are not familiar with the process for filing such reports. The reports received by the regulator are confidential and no analysis of the information contained therein has been carried out by the agency.

“We are not a law enforcement agency, and our role in regulating cannabis is to ensure that licensees and registrants comply with Maine’s laws regarding adult and medical marijuana use,” Heidrich wrote in response to a request for information Criminal reports in cannabis companies. “Theft and burglary are crimes, and the best source of information about criminal activity is, and always has been, law enforcement.”

An executive at Tetrapoint LLC, a South Portland-based cannabis security firm that moves weed and cash for cannabis businesses, told the Portland Press Herald that many businesses are lulled by Maine’s reputation as a low-crime state, so that they are complacent about security. But he said the threat to cannabis companies is still there.

“The tendency is to say, the bank is only half an hour away, why should we pay people to go there?” said the manager, who requested anonymity to prevent him from being attacked for robberies while he was working will. “We have customers who live next to a bank and still use our services.”

The Executive also noted that despite the continued illegality of cannabis at the federal level, many local police departments treat cannabis businesses the same as other crime victims.

“In several different communities, we’ve found that local law enforcement is very friendly because it drives new business,” the safety officer said. “Some people might not be particularly happy about the industry, but it’s here, it’s now and it’s happening.”