It won lurid headlines when three Illinois residents were arrested by the FBI in Humboldt County last month in an alleged plot to rip off a local cannabis grower to the tune of $3 million. The case goes to trial in federal court in San Francisco this month.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Although none of the three have actually been charged with kidnapping, that is word being bandied about in reportage \u2014 based on the claims of an informant. The accused co-consiprators allegedly discussed plans to abduct a courier for the target and \u201cmake him suffer\u201d until he gave up the location of his boss\u2019 stash of cash and cannabis. As you might expect, attorneys for the accused tell a very different story.<\/p>\n
Federal agents intercepted two of the men, Emanoel Borisov and Paul Brooks, as they arrived at Arcata\u2019s airport on a flight from San Francisco on April 3. The third, Evgeni Kopankov, was apprehended on the road to the airport, where he was apparently headed to pick up the other two. All are charged with attempting to commit \u201cInterference with Commerce by Threats or Violence,\u201d and could face up to 20 years in prison. <\/p>\n
An affidavit presented by a Eureka-based FBI agent, quoted in the local news site Redheaded Blackbelt<\/a>, states that \u201ca [sic] FBI Confidential Human Source (CHS) in Illinois told FBI agents that Borisov approached him about committing a robbery.\u201d In the affidavit, Borisov is described as \u201ca large Bulgarian male with numerous tattoos, who previously worked security for strip clubs and marijuana properties in California.\u201d Borisov reportedly \u201ctold CHS that there was an imminent arrival of approximately $2.3 million in cash to a home in California belonging to a Bulgarian\u2026 involved in the cultivation and trafficking of marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n Brooks is described as an ex-Marine and Iraq war veteran who knew Borisov from working at strip clubs in the Chicago area.\u00a0<\/p>\n Kopankov had apparently already come to the attention of the feds. In December he\u2019d been a passenger on a private plane that flew into Arcata from Georgia with $2 million in cash that was uncovered when a drug-sniffing dog \u201calerted\u201d to the presence of controlled substances. The cash was seized by the DEA as drug proceeds, although no arrests were made.\u00a0<\/p>\n The other passenger on the plane in the December incident was identified as Edgar Garcia, who was said to be in a property dispute with Humboldt resident Ivan Iliev \u2014 another man of Bulgarian origin later named as the intended victim in the robbery conspiracy. Kopankov allegedly told the informant they intended to spread false rumors in hopes that Iliev would blame \u201cthe Mexicans\u201d for the robbery.<\/p>\n The\u00a0San Jose Mercury News<\/a> cited the feds as saying that Borisov had worked in \u201cmarijuana fields\u201d in the area, and that Kopankov was \u201caffiliated with growers who cultivate weed by the ton.\u201d However, the same Mercury News article incorrectly reports that the men were arrested at San Francisco airport while attempting to get on a flight to Eureka. In fact, they were arrested at Arcata airport after arriving from San Francisco. The article also badly mis-spells Kopankov\u2019s name, rendering it \u201cKpokankov.\u201d<\/p>\n Attorney David Michael of the San Francisco law firm\u00a0Michael & Burch<\/a>\u00a0is representing Kopankov in the case. Contacted by Cannabis Now, he said his own investigations had revealed that the\u00a0informant in the case is under indictment himself for fraud, which may explain his cooperation with the feds.\u00a0<\/p>\n Michael says Kopankov lives in the Chicago area and his only involvement in the cannabis business is renting a piece of land in Humboldt to a grower who is licensed by state and local authorities and operates entirely within the law. (Media accounts place the land in the town of Whitethorn, outside Garberville.)<\/p>\n He also asserts that Kopankov only had $7,000 on his person in the December incident at the Arcata airport\u2014 \u00a0and had paperwork showing it was earned legally in Illinois. He says Kopankov has filed a claim to get that money returned.<\/p>\n As for the supposed robbery and \u201ckidnapping\u201d conspiracy, Michael utterly rejects the accusations against Kopankov. \u201cThere is\u00a0no evidence against my client. It is all a fantasy by this informant. And there is no recorded conversation of him with my guy, only the other two. My client\u2019s clean. He came over here from Bulgaria and worked hard and became a citizen. He lives a clean life and is happily married. He\u2019s never been in trouble.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Michael says Kopankov made his money running a trucking company in Chicago before purchasing his land on Humboldt. He was bringing furniture out to his Humboldt property when he was busted, Michael says. \u201cWhy would he want to do this if he was successful? He\u2019s got property and legal businesses going on\u2014why would he plan a crime?\u201d<\/p>\n Michael also notes that the guns and ski-masks supposedly referenced by the informant were never produced.<\/p>\n Finally, Michael says he believes there is xenophobia and ethnic bias at work in the case. \u201cI think the federal government has a built-in antagonism to foreigners who come to this country and take advantage of the cannabis laws in various states. It\u2019s especially easy to stereotype Bulgarians as people with no respect for the law. It\u2019s easy for the feds to believe claims about guns and masks.\u201d<\/p>\n The press coverage has been pretty blatant in playing up the salacious aspect of the case. \u201cIt was a plot that reads something like a villainous heist movie, if the FBI\u2019s contentions are true,\u201d the Mercury News wrote in its lede. <\/p>\n The\u00a0North Coast Journal<\/a>\u00a0opted for: \u201cThe story is cut from a Hollywood script, with characters straight from central casting\u2026\u201d \u00a0The piece also notes that the plot was supposedly hatched in conversations at\u00a0\u201cPolekatz, a sprawling 18,000-square-foot bar about 15 miles outside of Chicago with all nude, full-contact lap dances, poor Yelp reviews and a shady reputation.\u201d<\/p>\n There is a sense of life imitating art here, given the current popularity of the fictional\u00a0\u201cMurder Mountain\u201d<\/a>\u00a0TV series concerning violent crime set against the backdrop of the Humboldt cannabis industry. The series was\u00a0blasted<\/a>\u00a0by the Humboldt Sheriff\u2019s Office earlier this year as \u201chighly sensationalized.\u201d<\/p>\n Northern California in recent years has seen a few\u00a0actual cases of violence<\/a>\u00a0concerning \u201ctrimmigrants\u201d \u2014 the unflattering nickname for seasonal workers who trim the buds of newly harvested cannabis. As is often the case, those stigmatized as violent rabble are often themselves victimized by poor labor practices. There was local outrage\u00a0in 2011 after a Humboldt grower of Bulgarian origin, Taco Nikolov Budnakov, copped a plea to avoid prison time after his operation was raided, spending only two nights in jail. But his four trimmers \u2014 three Bulgarians and a Ukrainian \u2014 couldn\u2019t afford bail and\u00a0spent almost two months in jail<\/a>\u00a0before they were allowed to plead \u201cno contest\u201d to misdemeanor charges.<\/p>\n It\u2019s particularly telling that in the current case, Bulgarians, themselves members of a stigmatized group in the area, are accused of seeking to scapegoat Mexicans \u2014 another stigmatized group. Certainly\u00a0media hype\u00a0about Mexican cartels and even\u00a0Chinese crime networks<\/a>\u00a0moving into the Emerald Triangle\u2019s illicit cannabis sector has fueled an atmosphere ripe for such intrigues. In a kind of cultural hangover from cannabis prohibition, there seems to be a continued convergence of the drug stigma and xenophobia.\u00a0<\/p>\n Following claims of ethnic bias in local cannabis raids last year, community leaders in the Triangle acknowledged that many growers had been left behind in the transition to a legal market by social marginalization. Terra Carver, executive director of the\u00a0Humboldt County Growers Alliance<\/a>,\u00a0admitted<\/a>: \u201cWhat we\u2019ve seen across the board with the Hmong, Bulgarian and Latino populations is there hasn\u2019t been a lot of outreach.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Legal cannabis was supposed to de-escalate the wild west atmosphere in the Emerald Triangle. The convoluted case of Borisov, Brooks and Kopankov reveals just how far there is still to go.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, where else have you noticed prejudice in the cannabis industry?<\/p>\n The post Cannabis-Linked \u2018Kidnapping\u2019 Case Reflects Emerald Triangle Ethnic Tensions<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
It won lurid headlines when three Illinois residents were arrested by the FBI in Humboldt County last month in an alleged plot to rip off a local cannabis grower to the tune of $3 million. The case goes to trial in federal court in San Francisco this month.\u00a0 Although noneContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[50,3792,380,100,780,3874,90,6948,5153,177,3860],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35202"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=35202"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35202\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":35203,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35202\/revisions\/35203"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=35202"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=35202"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=35202"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}\u2018No Evidence Against My Client\u2019<\/strong><\/h4>\n
Ethnic Stigma and Cannabis Stigma<\/strong><\/h4>\n
\n
\nRead More: Cannabis-Linked \u2018Kidnapping\u2019 Case Reflects Emerald Triangle Ethnic Tensions<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"