Family grow rich on drug crop Tenants of a €2,000-a-month villa had secret plantation
Electricity demands caused power cut
TENANTS of a €2,000-a-month Costa Blanca villa shared their home with a secret marijuana plantation – allegedly using the income from drugs to fund their lifestyle.
The family unit – a 38-yearold father, 29-year-old mum, and sons aged eight and a new born baby – moved into the Calpe villa last October and allegedly invested in growing the illegal but highly profitable crop. Their spacious threestorey home, with gardens and a private pool, was located on a central urbanisation in Calpe.
However, police were made aware of the possible existence of an indoor plantation in Calpe last December and launched what became Operation Murcia.
They discovered the adult suspects were part of wellknown criminal family living in the neighbouring region and had records linked to drug trafficking dating back a decade.
After a two-month investigation, detectives believed their suspects had installed key infrastructure at the villa which ‘probably housed a plantation of large dimensions’.
It was also found that as well as paying €12,000 to secure the home and the monthly rental, the couple had no obvious source of income.
A spokesman for the Guardia Civil said: “All the capital available to the couple came from drug trafficking. They acted with total impunity, without trying to hide behind some other work activity that gave them cover.”
Officers raided the house and ‘confirmed their suspicions’. They discovered 250m2 of the building was converted into an ‘intensive production greenhouse’.
In the basement there was a room of 200m2 and some 850 cannabis plants; on the ground floor a smaller room in which 150 marijuana plants were growing.
“The plants were at various stages of maturity which made it easier for the suspects to collect them and enjoy a permanent source of income from the illicit activity,” said the spokesman.
“They had all the necessary infrastructure to maintain indoor marijuana cultivation at full capacity.”
Police discovered ‘sophisticated’ air ventilation machines to disguise the smell of the crop; large reservoirs of water to drip feed thirsty plants; large amounts of fertiliser’ and machinery to accelerate growth; €1,000 in cash; and paraphernalia linked to drug cultivation.
And the spokesman added: “Such was the level of fraudulent use of electricity, they generated a cut in the supply for the rest of the urbanisation through the illegal hook up.”
The couple have been charged with the cultivation or manufacture of drugs and obtaining electricity by fraud.
Both were released on bail by a Denia judge on condition they report weekly to the authorities.