State officials believe that illegal marijuana farms controlled by out-of-state and foreign organizations are becoming a greater menace and that an increasing number of Chinese nationals are running them. Asian-American community leaders claim that the prospect of quick money lures many young, hopeless Chinese from cities like New York to Oklahoma.
On November 20, after sundown, 45-year-old Chinese national Wu Chen allegedly invaded a marijuana plantation close to Hennessey, Oklahoma, a small rural community of roughly 3,000 people.
Wu allegedly spent hours on the 10-acre (4-hectare) property before killing three men and one woman, also of Chinese descent, in what the police later claimed were “mafia-style executions.”
Another man suffered critical injuries. According to court documents, the injured person is Yi Fei Lin, while the dead are Quirong Lin, Chen He Chun, Chen He Qiang, and Fang Hui Lee. All of them are thought to have entered the US illegally. According to Oklahoma officials, the killings were grim confirmation of a growing concern in the state: marijuana farms operated illegally by out-of-state and foreign corporations that are able to get around both state and federal legislation.
Furthermore, a growing number of Chinese nationals are said to own and run these facilities, according to the state’s drug enforcement agency. While community leaders claim that many young, desperate Chinese in cities like New York are enticed to Oklahoma by the promise of quick money, the horrific killings have shocked Asian Americans around the nation.
Nearly 80% of the 200 or so farms that the Oklahoma Bureau of Narcotics (OBN) has closed down over the past two and a half years, according to Mark Woodward, public information officer, “were either controlled or owned by Chinese nationals or were tied to a Chinese criminal organization.” He said, “Were tied to China” were more than half of the 165 arrests made in connection with those instances.
Currently, Oklahoma is one of the 37 states with legal medical marijuana programs; 21 US states, plus Washington DC and Guam, have legalized marijuana use for recreational purposes. Oklahomans will decide whether to legalize recreational use in March. So why do marijuana growers choose Oklahoma as their location?
Oklahoma has become particularly appealing, according to Woodward, because of its affordable licenses, affordable land, and liberal regulations that place fewer constraints on the scale of farms. 2018 saw Oklahomans granted permission to legally cultivate an unlimited amount of cannabis for medical reasons and sell the harvest to approved dispensaries.
The law stipulates that residents of the state for at least two years must own 75% of each enterprise. The one-time charge for a grower’s license is US$2,500, and the annual renewal fee is US$2,000. A similar annual permit in the neighboring state of Arkansas goes for roughly $100,000 USD.
In Oklahoma, cannabis can be cultivated for as little as $100 per pound and sold on the illegal market or for $3,500 to $4,00 per pound in California or New York. Since 2020, more than 600,000 pounds of cannabis worth millions of dollars have allegedly been seized, according to Oklahoma’s drug enforcement agency.
Woodward remarked of the crop: “This is leaving the state and in truckloads.” We have intercepted wire transfers for many million dollars that are related to the groups we were investigating for selling illegal marijuana on the underground market in areas like Mexico or China,” he continued.
Don Anderson, executive director of OBN, claims that several criminal organizations, both domestic and foreign, have relocated to the state in order to take advantage of the legal system: “We have hundreds of cases going on as we speak.”
Over 80% of the marijuana grown in Oklahoma is exported illegally, according to John O’Connor, who just resigned as attorney general of the state. He claimed that Oklahoma was the US’s top marijuana supplier, which “gives you an idea of the extent of the problem.”
According to the state’s Marijuana Authority, there were 1,433 processors, 2,286 dispensaries, and 7,348 growers in Oklahoma as of July 2022. The state put a two-year embargo on new licenses for medicinal marijuana growers, processors, and dispensaries in August in an effort to stop illegal activities.
According to court filings in the Hennessey case, Wu was a part of “an illegal industrial-scale marijuana grow business” in Oklahoma. The farm was operated by “Liu & Chen Inc,” and according to the prosecution, it falsely gained its license to cultivate marijuana by declaring Richard Ignacio, an Oklahoma citizen, as a key shareholder in the company a year prior to the killings.
According to local newspapers, Yi Fei Lin and one of the male murder victims were identified as the farm’s proprietors on the deed, according to Kingfisher County Sheriff Dennis Banther. Assistant District Attorney Austin Murrey claimed in an affidavit submitted to the Kingfisher County District Court that Wu had wanted $300,000 from the farm’s workers “as a return of a portion of his investment” in the company.
The mass murder was sparked by the fact that it couldn’t be quickly turned over, according to Murrey. The state’s Office of the Chief Medical Examiner has released the medical reports on Lin Quirong and Chen He Chun, concluding that several gunshots were likely the cause of their deaths.
Their New York City residence addresses are given in the report. According to the article, Chen He Chun, who was 60 years old, was connected to Chen He Qiang and Fang Hui Lee. The other two victims’ medical summaries are still awaited.
The 44-year-old Quirong, a native of a village near Fuzhou City in Fujian province, came to the US in 2020. He lived in New York for two years before moving to Oklahoma two months prior to the killings because he couldn’t find a reliable, well-paying job in the city. This information was provided by John Chan, president of the Asian-American Community Empowerment, a Chinese-American organization with offices in Brooklyn.
“He was unrelated to the money dispute. Simply put, he was in the wrong place at the wrong time, according to Chan. The organization is currently helping Quirong’s wife obtain a US visa so that she can attend his burial. Although there are no official statistics available, Chan estimated that in the last two years, 20,000 people from Brooklyn alone migrated to areas like Oklahoma in search of jobs paying US$300 per day.
It’s hard to find somebody to work at restaurants since so many people have fled, he said. On the farms, he said, hardly anyone receives the promised wages. You can make a lot of money cultivating marijuana in Oklahoma, and we can help you get a license for a charge, according to Woodward, who said that some law firms and brokers had “recruited all across the United States, often on websites.”
The bad living conditions of the laborers were also confirmed by Woodward. “We have frequently encountered circumstances that we believe would qualify for labor trafficking,” he said, mentioning living outside, frequently without enough hygienic conditions or food. However, according to Woodward, these employees “usually never complain” either out of a need to work or apprehension of drug lord retaliation.
After all, is said and done, they are usually fired. And you will observe them trying to find employment at another nearby marijuana field by either getting into cars or strolling along the road. Chan anticipated that the killings would deter locals from working for the company. He added that such occasions run the risk of furthering American stereotypes of Asians by saying, “Weed is still a prohibited narcotic in China.”
The state’s Chinese population, according to John Duncan, a former OBN agent who is currently a professor at the University of Oklahoma, has long had a strong reputation. Their way of life is less violent. There aren’t many Chinese criminals going around on the streets.
According to him, the majority of those who ended up in the industry did so through illegal immigration and were therefore susceptible because they had no other way to integrate into American society than by working on farms. “Many immigrants over here are exploited and, in some ways, not much different from slave labor.”
Liu Pengyu, a spokesperson for the Chinese embassy in Washington, said the embassy was in contact with Quirong’s family and would “ask the US side to enable required visas based on humanitarian considerations” without commenting specifically on the matter.
The deaths had made individuals aware of the risks involved, according to a local news portal on WeChat, a well-liked Chinese social media platform that serves the US Chinese community, and it would “more or less” impair their willingness to work in the marijuana market.
Just two days after the killings, a report on the WeChat platform stated that these farms hire from the Chinese and Mexican populations in Los Angeles and New York, relying on local networks of friends and family for labor.
On WeChat, adverts are occasionally placed as well. The study cited Brooklyn residents who knew individuals who had applied for jobs at these farms despite the dangers. According to one, who went by the name Mr. Wang, “Life is the most essential thing.”
