Cash for Freedom: Man Arrested with 428 Pounds of Illegal Marijuana Attempts to Bribe Deputies

The Siskiyou County Sheriff’s Office arrested a man found to be transporting over 428 pounds of illegal marijuana to Santa Cruz from the Macdoel area, allegedly on behalf of a licensed marijuana business.

The man, Robert Marvin Levin, age 50, stated to law enforcement that he had traveled to a marijuana cultivation site near Macdoel to purchase marijuana shake for Pacific Coast Extract’s butane honey oil products, a company that currently holds an active license with the California Department of Cannabis Control (DCC). At the time of the arrest, Levin was in possession of $20,000 that he stated belonged to Pacific Coast Extracts and offered it to the deputies in exchange for his release.

Levin was arrested and booked into the Siskiyou County Jail for attempting to bribe a peace officer as well as the transportation and possession of marijuana for sales.

It is important to note that illegal marijuana cultivated in Siskiyou County is routinely found to be produced with highly toxic and carcinogenic Chinese-labeled pesticides that have never been registered or approved for use in the United States. Alarmingly, many buyers and transporters of these illicit products are representatives of operations licensed by the California Department of Cannabis Control (DCC). They are knowingly purchasing illegally cultivated marijuana that is eventually manufactured into cannabis products and sold in licensed dispensaries to unsuspecting consumers.

It is convincingly clear that the legal market continues to be infected by the black market, and the State of California fails to aggressively combat this public health issue.