• More than 1,600 plants with a total of 300 kilos of marijuana were seized in a new action in the La Mancha municipality of 'El Casar'

• A person arrested and charged with crimes against public health and for fraud in electricity

• The house, a 380 square meter property spread over three floors, had a good part of the rooms dedicated to growing plants, giving the external appearance of a mere residential property.

February 28, 2024.- Officials from the Customs Surveillance Service of the Tax Agency in Castilla-La Mancha have intervened in a home in the municipality of El Casar (Guadalajara) that was fully dedicated to indoor marijuana cultivation. As a result of this action, the second of similar characteristics deployed in recent days in the same town, more than 1,600 plants with more than 300 kilos of marijuana have been intervened and a person has been arrested and charged with two crimes against the public health and fraud in electrical fluid.

The so-called 'Swamp' operation has been developed by the Operational Unit of the Customs Surveillance Service in Guadalajara, with the collaboration of the Central Mobile Brigade of the General Subdirectorate of Operations of the Tax Agency. The operation, which led to the dismantling of the plantation on February 22, began last January, thanks to citizen collaboration.

The initial investigation finally culminates with the entry and search of the home, inside which the agents found a total of 1,620 marijuana plants in different stages of growth and flowering, located in several rooms of the property and adapted for illegal cultivation, with the infrastructure necessary for this.

A property dedicated to the cultivation of marijuana

The house intervened was a single-family property, measuring about 380 square meters, with a distribution of three floors and a mezzanine, in which all the rooms had been dedicated to the illegal cultivation of marijuana, with the exception of the entrance to the property, the kitchen. , and the living room, the latter used as a bedroom and dining room, as if it were a 'narco-housing'.

The property had an electrical installation perfectly arranged to supply the different air conditioning, air extraction, lighting and heat lamps, as well as the irrigation system itself. All machinery has been seized as part of the operation, as have numerous fertilizer products used to force the growth of plants.

The plantation dismantled with this operation would have had a market value of approximately 600,000 euros per harvest, although the annual production of these plantations is up to six harvests per year, depending on several factors, such as genetics, space or energy. Most indoor plants produce between 400 and 500 grams of marijuana per square meter.

During the action, a person of foreign nationality was arrested inside the property, while two collaborators who the investigators consider equally responsible for the crime have also been located thanks to a series of investigative efforts carried out. carried out so as not to raise suspicions, given that the house had a remote surveillance system to control the plantation that could have alerted of the police presence at the time of the intervention. The two collaborators are being investigated and not detained.

After the action, the collaboration of operators from the company in charge of electricity supply in the area also made it possible to detect the illegal connection to the electrical network that had been implemented for the home. Unlike installations of these characteristics on rural land, where it is common to detect with some ease the existence of illegal sockets or hooks to light poles, plantations located within municipalities are not easy to detect with the naked eye, since the electrical system usually goes underground and illegal connections are hidden.

The investigation remains open without ruling out new arrests.