OG Drama/Speculation

[lemonboy]

People have been calling him Marc the Narc because he posted RC's name to Cannabis Culture. The funny thing about this is, if RC were actually arrested this would have been public information already. So basically it was people who already hated Marc Emery, hating Marc Emery.

The story del posted just confirms what people were beginning to suspect all along, that it was a sham bust to give him (RC) time to get away.

[del...]

i'll post the article here before it gets taken off of the public access part of the site...and to make for easier reading...


Potheads show youâ??re not anonymous online
By Leif M. Wright
Phoenix Staff Writer


GreenThum43215: Hey, are you the Phoenix guy?
LeifMWright: Yes. Whoâ??s this?
GreenThum43215: You interested in an internet story?
LeifMWright: Iâ??m all ears.
GreenThum43215: Have you ever heard of overgrow.com?

That Internet chat began the weirdest column Iâ??ve ever undertaken, one full of international intrigue, secret marijuana gardens, the Royal Canadian Mounted Police, the Drug Enforcement Administration, a shady character with an Armenian name, a former movie actor turned marijuana seed dealer and tens of thousands of freaked-out potheads who started what I call the Marijuana Bean Field Wars.

Overgrow.com was the worldâ??s largest marijuana cultivation Web site, and possibly the largest single marketplace of illegal ideas in the history of the world. The site taught growers the ins and outs of the plant and how to increase their yields and ostensibly increase the THC content. THC is the chemical believed to cause the â??highâ?� of marijuana.

At its peak before Jan. 31, Overgrow.com had more than 100,000 active members â?? a massive amount for all but the largest web sites, and certainly for one that exchanged information that is illegal in most places.

Jan. 31, the site disappeared. Poof. Up in smoke, you might say.
It had warned users a couple of days earlier that it would be undergoing server upgrades, so expect some outages. So no one panicked.

A day later, the site was still gone. Potheads, who are notoriously paranoid already, began to wig out.

What if the site had been busted? Would members be subject to prosecution based on the information they had shared on the site? Had authorities been watching the whole time, building up information so they could attack?

The war begins
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GreenThum43215: A lot of people around here are freaking out.

Probably an understatement.

I started searching the Internet for information about Overgrow.com. I found a slew of forums and dozens of sites repeating the same news: Overgrow.com and its parent site, Heavenâ??s Stairway, had been shut down, their Canadian owner arrested, his house raided and his family jailed.

Heavenâ??s Stairway was a seed distribution company. Marijuana growers call the seeds â??beans.â?� Heavenâ??s Stairway, according to Canadian pot activist Marc Emery, had to be the largest seed merchant in North America, selling cannabis seeds all across Canada and the United States, and probably to other countries, too.

The stories on the Internet didnâ??t answer some key questions. Were the Web sites shut down by Canadian authorities, or were they, as Emeryâ??s own bust nine months earlier, done in cooperation with the DEA?

Who was the mysterious owner of the sites, and what happened to him? Was he in jail? Was he out? Was he even alive?

What happened to the records of his seed business and the logs on his site that could possibly lead police to those who frequented the site?

Internet forums were atwitter with the details â?? or lack of them.

It seems the sites were owned by a Richard Calrisian in Montreal.
But later, it seemed â??Calrisianâ?� had been an alias. His real name was Richard Baghdadlian. And later, it seemed â??Richardâ?� was an alias, too. His real name, they asserted, was Hratch Baghdadlian.

No one seemed to be able to find any official records of his arrest, or even of an investigation.

That, the growers seemed unified in believing, was even more ominous. If the cops had busted Baghdadlian but hadnâ??t arrested him, it could be that they were still investigating â?? or worse, Baghdadlian was cooperating with them, singing like a canary, selling out seed customers, seed merchants and growers all over the continent.

I called the Royal Canadian Mounted Police headquarters in Ottawa.

â??We donâ??t confirm or deny if there is an ongoing investigation,â?� said Sgt. Nathalie Dechenes, spokesman for the RCMP. â??So we wouldnâ??t tell you either way. I donâ??t know if we even have authority to shut down Web sites.â?�

So I called Emery, who was busted nine months ago and is facing extradition to the United States on charges of selling marijuana seeds in the U.S.

â??Iâ??m facing 31 years in a maximum security federal prison,â?� Emery said. â??It seems to me if Baghdadlian was facing the same thing, he might have started cooperating if they offered to drop the investigation in the U.S. and keep him in Canada.â?�

Emery had run a seed company in competition with Heavenâ??s Stairway. When he was busted, his computers were seized (â??Nothing was on them,â?� he said), and his clients in the United States started receiving blue sheets of paper asking them to confirm orders they had placed with his company.

â??It was essentially an effort to try to get them to incriminate themselves,â?� he said. â??But most were smart enough to hit my Web site and find out it was the DEA and not us sending those notices out.â?�

Meanwhile, several cannabis-related sites were breaking out into full civil war over the Overgrow debacle.

On one side was a fomer movie actor who had had a bit part in a Jean-Claude VanDamme flick and now was calling himself â??Gypsy Nirvana.â?� He claimed to have spoken with â??RC,â?� which was a pseudonym for Baghdadlian (growers seem to be big on initials and acronyms).

RC, Nirvana assured everyone, had been arrested, but he was out on bail and he had shut down the servers when he learned of the impending raid â?? everyoneâ??s information was safe.

Dissenters began to surface, however, saying Nirvana had a profit motive in mind; he wanted Heavenâ??s Stairwayâ??s seed business.

On the other side was someone calling himself â??Plural of Mongoose,â?� who apparently commanded great respect in the growing community. He also claimed to have spoken with RC, who had told him several lies, some of which, combined with a friend being busted, led him to believe RC was cooperating with the authorities.

Caught in the middle was Emery, whose own case had generated a lot of publicity, and who is loved by about half the growing community and violently hated by the other half. Emeryâ??s initial statement on the matter had been that Baghdadlian, tired of the seed business, had decided it was time to bail, so he shut up shop and took off to greener pastures, no pun intended.

The battle raged on in Internet boards with Nirvana accusing Emery of being a jerk for revealing Baghdadlianâ??s name and phone number on his own site.

Others said Baghdadlian was the jerk for leaving his business partners high and dry, wondering if they could be busted at any time based on information from his servers.

No bust, no investigation, mom says
I called a number given on one site for Baghdadlian. A woman answered and gave her name as â??Mrs. Baghdadlian.â?�

She confirmed that Hratch is her son and that he was the proprietor of Heavenâ??s Stairway and Overgrow.com.

â??Nothing has happened, there is nothing right now,â?� she said in an Armenian accent. â??He has not been arrested. There is no investigation.â?�

I asked her if Baghdadlian had shut the servers down himself. She started stuttering.

â??Um,â?� she said. â??I donâ??t think I can say anything more than this.â?�

I asked if she knew where I could reach him to talk to him. She said she did not.

â??Wow,â?� Emery said when I told him about the conversation. â??That sure lends credence to the idea that he took the money and ran.â?�

Itâ??s possible that Baghdadlian had noticed an increased amount of government servers hitting his sites, saw the writing on the wall and bailed. Emery agreed it was possible.

â??Before I was raided, about six weeks before, there was a huge Department of Justice focus on our Web site,â?� he said. â??Our server logs revealed their IP addresses and we were able to do a whois on them and find out where the hits were coming from.â?�

Taking the money and running would explain Baghdadlianâ??s silence â?? and the silence of law enforcement, which had thrown a big media party when they busted Emery, patting themselves very publicly on the back for such a large takedown.

What does it mean to you?
The bottom line is those who were doing business with Baghdadlian and Emery were breaking the law if they were doing it in the United States â?? they took a tremendous risk to break the law, and they are likely wise to be worried.

Doing that business over the Internet may have given people a false sense of security, since the Internet allows people to feel â??anonymous.â?�

In the marijuana growing community, the disappearance of Overgrow has made them rudely aware that Internet anonymity is an illusion.

For law enforcement, if there was no bust, they may still benefit from Baghdadlianâ??s disappearance. Growers all over the Internet were proclaiming that they were done â?? they were shutting their operations down for fear â??LEOâ?� would come get them based on information obtained from Baghdadlianâ??s debacle.

The net gain for law enforcement is a new paranoia in the cannabis-growing world â?? and fewer people growing, which means shorter supply and less headache for â??LEO.â?�

The average, law-abiding citizen can take a good message away from the mess, too, though. The message:

â??Youâ??re never anonymous,â?� Emery said. â??Itâ??s impossible. Governments are investing huge amounts of money to monitor whatâ??s going on on the Internet. If theyâ??re interested in knowing something, theyâ??ll get it.â?�

Protecting yourself over the Internet â?? even in legitimate business â?? should take top priority. You may never have thought about breaking a law yourself, but your information is scattered all over the Internet, and those with less scruples than you can easily gain access to it and use it to defraud you.

Be careful. The Internet is still a rough new frontier, much like Oklahoma was in the Land Run years. You may not be facing droughts and maurading bandits, but you face less-than-honest people who will take your information and use it to hurt you.

â??Never do business with anyone who wonâ??t give you a real name,â?� Emery said.

More importantly, never do online business with a company you havenâ??t thoroughly seen to be trustworthy. Even big companies suffer from â??phishing,â?� where people will pretend to be the big companies and request personal information from you, which is later used to defraud you.

For those doing illegal business over the Internet, my advice is this: Just donâ??t.

You can reach Leif M. Wright at 684-2906 or [email protected]. If youâ??re â??LEO,â?� you already know that.



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Originally published February 17, 2006

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Leif M. Wright

â??Growersâ??
Common term for those who cultivate cannabis plants.





â??LEOâ??
Term used by growers for Law Enforcement Officers.





â??whoisâ??
An Internet service for determining where a particular computer is located. When you surf to a site, your Internet service provider leaves a trail called an IP address. Whois services allow site owners to find out where that IP address is coming from.

[del...]

it struck me as kinda weird that this guy (the reporter) apparently posed as a genuine og-er (not saying he wasn't either) just to write this article. were any of you og people aware this was going on? do you recall this 'LeifMWright' guy and any posts in the grow sections or did he hang in the cafe? i'm curious now and wondering if it's going on here too...

[turtle420]

i'll post the article here before it gets taken off of the public access part of the site...and to make for easier reading...

Good one...

If we really want to bring public attention to this, we need to try and get it posted over @ /.

For sure, OverGrow would make the news three days later. But, do we want that??? I refrained from submitting the OverGrow.com story to /. because of that... I don't know if... you know.... if we want that kind of publicity.

[turtle420]

it struck me as kinda weird that this guy (the reporter) apparently posed as a genuine og-er (not saying he wasn't either) just to write this article. were any of you og people aware this was going on? do you recall this 'LeifMWright' guy and any posts in the grow sections or did he hang in the cafe? i'm curious now and wondering if it's going on here too...

LeifMWright...
Ok, from the chat @ the top of the article...

But, where was that chat conducted? Since I read OverGrow.com was down, I haven't tried to access it.... is it up? Where did these two guys "chatted"?

[lemonboy]

it struck me as kinda weird that this guy (the reporter) apparently posed as a genuine og-er (not saying he wasn't either) just to write this article. were any of you og people aware this was going on? do you recall this 'LeifMWright' guy and any posts in the grow sections or did he hang in the cafe? i'm curious now and wondering if it's going on here too...

Where does it say he posed as an og-er? I'm not getting that impression from the way it reads to me. Although it does sound like he has a special interest in the story, like a message to friends.

Edit: The thing at the top just looks like someone contacting him over AIM or something.

[del...]

turtle, years ago when seedbanks had these horrid wars betwen themselves trolls would go around the various sites to blow shit about whoever's service. marc was always an easy target and one day he had enough of the flames and trolls and stupidly said something to the effect, "all you people bitching about my service forget i have your addresses...blah blah blah". then it took off from there that he's a narc...which is total bullshit. i'm no fan of emery and feel he's done more harm to 'the cause' than good, but he stands up for what he believes in and does something (even if not in the best interest at times) while most of us sit on our asses...and i believe he'd never turn over on anyone at any time. what he said was stupid, yes but when not taken out of context you can probably see how it happened and understand it better. ask other old timers around here about the seedbank wars about 6-8 years ago when weedseed, hs, emery and dr greenthumb were at the top of the biz...or check the archives at marihemp! lots of good stuff there that might better explain the mentality of the seed merchants and the biz in general. but be ready to spend days getting into the saga...

[turtle420]

Hey del..., now that I've got your attention...
Seed sales (pretty direct) going on over @ cultivation...
weedman4u
and
sikishgenus
...

BTW: Thanks for the "Marc the Narc" explanation... I see your point... he just slipped his mind... I too doubt that he'd turn over anybody...

[turtle420]

Hey del..., now that I've got your attention...
Seed sales (pretty direct) going on over @ cultivation...
weedman4u
and
sikishgenus
...

DAMN! that was fast...