The infamous cannabis grow at 128 Weld Road in Wilton, just behind the former Bass Shoe Factory, is a total loss following a mysterious fire that destroyed the facility. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security had previously flagged it as one of more than 270 such illicit cannabis sites in Maine.
The fire was first reported early Friday morning, according to a Facebook post from the nearby Farmington Fire Rescue, which said they dispatched fire fighters around 5:15 a.m.
The location of the fire was in a separate building from the old shoe factory, but it sits on the same property behind the primary complex. The location has been the site of a cannabis growing operation well known to locals and law enforcement for years.
But since a raid in November of 2022, the operators had been trying, at least on paper, to operate as a legal cannabis business.
The records—obtained from Maine’s cannabis regulator through a Freedom of Access Act request—include inspection reports, cease-and-desist orders, licensing records, and law enforcement notes. The records indicate that multiple individuals—primarily of Chinese descent—were operating at this address.
The records show numerous violations of state medical cannabis laws, non-compliant plant counts, unauthorized access to cultivation rooms, and ongoing concealment of ownership and operations. The records paint a picture of a coordinated cultivation network—known in Maine as an illegal collective—operating under the guise of Maine’s caregiver program.
OCP records show the following growers were registered to grow cannabis at the Wilton location: Shiang Chen, Yanjun Chen, Zhenjun Chen, Weiqiang He, Qiming Huang, Biyan Huang, Xiongwei Huang, Quanqin Liang, ZhuLei Li, Chaoxiong Liu, and Jackie Zheng.
Many of the individuals did not speak English, the documents suggest, and Jackie Zheng is frequently described as having to translate during interactions with OCP inspectors. Some of the individuals used registered businesses as fronts to wholesale their cannabis. For example, Shiang Chen operated via Shiang Gardens, Biyan Huang operated through Biyan Gardens and Huang Gardens, and Xiongwei Huang operated West Side Botanicals.
OCP records from early 2023 suggest that multiple Chinese growers submitted applications around the same time period and, by May 19, 2023, inspectors were already flagging myriad violations during scheduled inspections. By June and August, the problems had escalated to the point where the Wilton Town Office, located within sight of the building, issued cease and desist orders to several of the growers. In Nov. 2023, OCP inspectors and officers from the Wilton Police Department raided the location and seized an estimated $1 million in illegally grown cannabis.
OCP records indicate that the individuals present in the Wilton facility at the time of the November raid confessed that they’d been knowingly continuing to grow without valid licenses.
The case is not unlike that of Lucas Sirois, a Farmington man who was owned a large marijuana cultivation facility that rented out rooms to medicinal marijuana growers. In Sirois’s case, OCP agents referred his case to the federal Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA), which launched a full-scale Department of Justice investigation of Sirois that included wiretaps, warrants for financial information, and multiple search warrants.
Sirois continues to fight his charges in court, with the U.S. Supreme Court recently declining to hear his case.
Unlike Sirois, Maine’s OCP never referred the Chinese growers in Wilton to the DEA or the DOJ. Asked to explain the discrepancy in treatment, OCP has never responded to the Maine Wire. But the treatment that the crew at the old Bass Shoe Factory location got couldn’t have been more different than that received by Sirois, whose own marijuana growing facility was, ironically, called the Shoe Factory.
By January, the men involved in the Wilton growing operation were able to convince both OCP and the town of Wilton that the marijuana operation occurring within the building was a legal, licensed affair that just happened to stray outside the regulations as the fault of a business manager named Johnny Wu, a.k.a. Yen Hsien Wu.
Wu, whose Maine drivers’ license listed his address as Nelke Place in Lewiston, had previously been stripped of his license to grow cannabis under Maine’s medicinal marijuana program at a facility in Gardiner. OCP records, law enforcement records, and the Maine Wire’s own investigation into Wu’s cannabis-related activities also indicate that Wu was involved in marijuana grows in Turner, Lewiston, and Auburn.
Wu, along with his associate Jung “Jason” Tsai, both attempted to grow cannabis legally in Maine as medicinal caregivers, had their licenses stripped for various violations, but subsequently remained involved in Maine’s bustling illicit cannabis trade.
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Maine State Police records obtained by the Maine Wire show that state troopers, as early as 2021, believed that a Turner cannabis facility also operated by Wu and Tsai was “run by a Chinese gang from [New York].”
Neither Wu nor Tsai, nor anyone involved in cannabis cultivation at 128 Weld in Wilton, has ever been charged with a crime in Maine.
The cause of the Friday fire has yet to be determined, but a Wilton town worker who was on the scene Monday to shut off the water flowing to the building said he suspects the fire was intentionally set.
The fire, he said, took more than 33,000 gallons of water to extinguish.
Unlike some Chinese marijuana grows in Maine that have caught fire, where even a non-professional can tell that a blaze began at the electrical entrance, there was no visible indication at the building of where or how the fire began.
Officials at the Wilton Town Office said no inspection had been completed.
The building is owned by Travis Gray, the owner of Travis Gray Trucking.
