3 Men Plead Guilty In Marijuana Grow Operation

CHESTER COUNTY, S.C.,None — Three men who were living deep in the woods in Chester County growing marijuana will spend 10 years in prison.

They were arrested in June 2009 after sheriff's deputies did surveillance for a week on a suspected marijuana farm off Hosea Strong Road.

Eyewitness News was there Friday when 24-year-old Victor Manuel Sausedo Villa, 40-year-old Ulver Macedo Hernandez and 27-year-old Maulcon Arnulfo Rodriques each pleaded guilty to trafficking marijuana over 10 pounds.

Sheriff's deputies found them growing $11 million worth of pot in a heavily-wooded area in the northern part of the county. Officers pulled more than 11,000 plants from the hidden growing site on June 23, 2009.

Chester County became known as the marijuana-growing capitol of the state because large operations were uncovered nearly every summer. The county is rural and largely undeveloped. For years, deputies made few arrests because the illegal farmers would disappear once they heard the police helicopters overhead, trying to locate their crop.

By the time deputies hacked and bulldozed their way to the secluded growing site, all that was left were tarps, food packages and some bedding.

Chester County Sheriff Richard Smith chose to wait the pot growers out by doing undercover surveillance for up to 10 days. That approach worked in 2009, and Villa, Hernandez and Rodriques were arrested.

None of the three defendants speak English, so they spoke through a translator in a Lancaster County courtroom on Friday.

All three said in police interviews that they were from Mexico but were living in Charlotte, looking for work at the time. They were trying to earn money to send back to their families in Mexico, they said, but couldn't find jobs in Charlotte.

They told DEA agents that one day, a man approached them, promising to pay each of them $100 a day if they'd grow marijuana about 45 minutes away from Charlotte. They agreed, and lived in the woods for at least three months, tending and watering the plants, before they were caught.

In court, their defense lawyers described Villa, Hernandez and Rodriques as the lowest on the totem pole. They expressed concern that their clients would be legally treated like drug dealers instead of pawns in a much larger drug operation.

One attorney accused the solicitor of not being willing to budge and agree to a lighter sentence.

All three defendants worked as farmers or ranchers in Mexico. They each had the equivalent of a third-grade education.

Judge Brooks Goldsmith accepted the negotiated plea deal and sentenced the three men to 10 years in prison. They could've received a mandatory 25-year sentence had they gone to trial and been convicted.

All three men have been in jail since they were arrested 17 months ago. They'll be given credit for that time served in the sentence.

WSOC